The time machine; an invention

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THE TIME MACHINE

Buckram Seriee. Ji^:

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HENRY HOLT & CO., New York.

THE TIME MACHINE

AN INVENTION

BY

H. G. WELLS

"Fool! All that is at all
Lasts ever past recall."

— Browning

KEW YORK

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1895

Copyright, 1895,

BY

HENRY HOLT & CO

THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS,
RAHWAY, N. J.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

T/ie Time Traveler's Story and a part of
the introductory conversation appeared as a
serial in the New Revieiv. Several descrip-
tive passages in the story had previously
appeared in dialogue form in the National
Observer, and the explanation of the ' ' prin-
ciples" of Time Traveling given in this book
is inserted from the latter paper, I desire
to make the usual acknowledgments.

H. S. W.

4'/'? 09 6

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Inventor, . . . i
II. The Time Traveler Re-
turns, .... 25

III. The Story Begins, . . 38

IV. The Golden Age, . . 52
V. Sunset, . . , « 63

VI. The Machine is Lost, . 79
VII. The Strange Animal, . 92
VIII. The Morlocks, . . 120
IX. When the Night Came, . 134
X. The Palace of Green Por-
celain, . . . 151
XI. In the Darkness of the

Forest, . . . .168
XII. The Trap of the White

Sphinx, ... 185

XIII. The Further Vision, . 192

XIV. After The Time Travel-

er's Story, ... 207

■/^^09

THE TIME MACHINE.

CHAPTER I.

XLbc ITnventor.

^HE man who made the
Time Machine — the man I
shall call the Time Traveler
— was well known in scientific circles
a few years since, and the fact of his
disappearance is also well known.
He was a mathematician of peculiar
subtlety, and one of our most con-
spicuous investigators in molecular
physics. He did not confine himself
to abstract science. Several ingeni-
ous, and one or two profitable, patents
were his : very profitable they were,
these last, as his handsome house at
Richmond testified. To those who

2 THE TIME MACHINE.

were his intimates, however, his
scientific investigations were as noth-
ing to his gift of speech. In the
after-dinner hours he was ever a
vivid and variegated talker, and at
times his fantastic, often paradoxical,
conceptions came so thick and close
as to form one continuous discourse.
At these times he was as unlike the
popular conception of a scientific in-
vestigator as a man could be. His
cheeks would flush, his eyes grow
bright ; and the stranger the ideas
that sprang and crowded in his
brain, the happier and the more
animated would be his exposition.
Up to the last there was held at
his house a kind of informal gather-
ing, which it was my privilege to at-
tend, and where, at one time or
another, I have met most of our dis-
tinguished literary and scientific men.
There was a plain dinner at seven.
After that we would adjourn to a
room of easy-chairs and little tables,
and there, with libations of alcohol

THE INVENTOR. 3

and reeking pipes, we would invoke
the god. At first the conversation
was mere fragmentary chatter, with
some local lacunce of digestive
silence ; but toward nine or half-past
nine, if the god was favorable, some
particular topic would triumph by a
kind of natural selection, and would
become the common interest. So it
was, I remember, on the last Thurs-
day but one of all— the Thursday
when I first heard of the Time
Machine.

I had been jammed in a corner
with a gentleman who shall be dis-
guised as Filby. He had been run-
ning down Milton — the public neg-
lects poor Filby's little verses shock-
ingly ; and as I could think of
nothing but the relative status of
Filby and the man he criticised, and
was much too timid to discuss that,
the arrival of that moment of fusion,
when our several conversations were
suddenly merged into a general dis-
cussion, was a great relief to me.

4 THE TIME MACHINE.

" What's that is nonsense ?" said a
well-known Medical Man, speaking
across Filby to the Psychologist.

" He thinks," said the Psycholo-
gist, "that Time's only a kind of
Space."

" It's not thinking," said the Time
Traveler ; "it's knowledge."

"fFoppish affectation," said Filby,
still harping upon his wrongs ; but
I feigned a great interest in this
question of Space and Time.

*' Kant "began the Psycholo-
gist.

*' Confound Kant ! " said the Time
Traveler. " I tell you I'm right.
I've got experimental proof of it.
I'm not a metaphysician." He ad-
dressed the Medical Man across the
room, and so brought the whole
company into his own circle. " It's
the most promising departure in ex-
perimental w^ork that has ever been
made. It will simply revolutionize
life. Heaven knows what life will be
when I've carried the thing through."

THE INVENTOR. 5

" As long as it's not the water of
immortality I don't mind," said the
distinguished Medical Man. " What
is it?"

" Only a paradox," said the Psy-
chologist.

The Time Traveler said nothing
in reply, but smiled and began tap-
ping his pipe upon the fender curb.
This was the invariable presage of
a dissertation.

" You have to admit that time is a
spatial dimension," said the Psychol-
ogist, emboldened by immunity and
addressing the Medical Man, "and
then all sorts of remarkable con-
sequences are found inevitable.
Among others, that it becomes pos-
sible to travel about in time."

The Time Traveler chuckled.
" You forget that I'm going to prove
it experimentally."

*' Let's have your experiment," said
the Psychologist.

" I think we'd like the argument
first," said Filby.

6 THE TIME MACHINE.

" It's this," said the Time Traveler.
" You must follow me carefully. I
shall have to controvert one or two
ideas that are almost universally ac-
cepted. The geometry, for instance,
they taught you at school is founded
on a misconception."

" Is not that rather a large thing
to expect us to begin upon?" said
Filby.

" I do not mean to ask you to
accept anything without reasonable
ground for it. You will soon admit
as much as I want from you. You
know, of course, that a mathematical
line, a line of thickness nil^ has no
real existence. They taught you
that ? Neither has a mathematical
plane. These things are mere ab-
stractions."

"That is all right," said the
Psychologist.

'* Nor, having only length, breadth,
and thickness; can a cube have a real
existence."

"There I object," said Filby.

THE INVENTOR. 7

" Of course a solid body may exist.
All real things "

** So most people think. But wait
a moment. Can an instantaneous
cube exist ? "

" Don't follow you," said Filby.

" Can a cube that does not last
for any time at all, have a real
existence ? "

Filby became pensive.

"Clearly," the Philosophical In-
ventor proceeded, "any real body
must have extension in four direc-
tions : it must have Length, Breadth,
Thickness, and — Duration. But
through a natural infirmity of the
flesh, which I will explain to you in
a moment, we incline to overlook
the fact. There are really four
dimensions, three which we call the
three planes of Space, and a fourth,
Time. There is, however, a tend-
ency to draw an unreal distinction
between the former three dimen-
sions and the latter, because it hap-
pens that our consciousness moves

8 THE TIME MACHINE.

intermittently in one direction along
the latter from the beginning to the
end of our lives."

" That," said a Very Young Man,
making spasmodic efforts to relight
his cigar over the lamp : " that —
very clear indeed."

" Now, it is very remarkable that
this is so extensively overlooked,"
continued the Philosophical Inven-
tor, with a slight accession of cheer-
fulness. "Really this is what is
meant by the Fourth Dimension,
though some people who talk about
the Fourth Dimension do not know
they mean it. It is only another
way of looking at Time. There is
no differ e7ice betiveen Time and any of
the three dimensions of Space except
that our consciousness moves along it.
But some foolish people have got
hold of the wrong side of that idea.
You have all heard what they have to
say about this Fourth Dimension ? "

"I have not," said the Provincial
Mayor.

THE INVENTOR. Q

"It is simply this, That space, as
our mathematicians have it, is spoken
of as having three dimensions, which
one may call Length, Breadth, and
Thickness, and is always definable
by reference to these planes, each at
right angle to the others. But some
philosophical people have been ask-
ing why three dimensions particularly
— why not another direction at right
angles to the other three ? — and have
even tried to construct a Four-Dimen-
sional geometry. Professor Simon
Newcomb was expounding this to
the New York Mathematical Society
only a month or so ago. You know
how on a flat surface, which has only
two dimensions, we can represent a
figure of a Three-Dimensional solid,
and similarly they think that by
models of three dimensions they
could represent one of four — if they
could master the perspective of the
thing. See?"

" I think so," murmured the Pro-
vincial Mayor ; and, knitting his

10 THE TIME MACHINE.

brows, he lapsed into an introspective
state, his lips moving as one who re-
peats mystic words. ** Yes, I think
I see it now," he said after some
time, brightening in a quite transi-
tory manner.

"" Well, I do not mind telling you I
have been at work upon this geom-
etry of Four Dimensions for some
time. Some of my results are curi-
ous : for instance, here is a portrait
of a man at eight years old, another
at fifteen, another at seventeen, an-
other at twenty-three, and so on. All
these are evidently sections, as it
were, Three-Dimensional representa-
tions of his Four-Dimensional being,
which is a fixed and unalterable
thing.

" Scientific people," proceeded the
Philosopher, after the pause requiicd
for the proper assimilation of this,
*' know very well that Time is only
a kind of Space. Here is a popular
scientific diagram, a weather record.
This line I trace with my finger shows

THE INVENTOR. 1 1

the movement of the barometer.
Yesterday it was so high, yesterday
night it fell, then this morning it rose
again, and so gently upward to here.
Surely the mercury did not trace this
line in any of the dimensions of space
generally recognized ? But certainly
it traced such a line, and that line,
therefore, we must conclude, was
along the Time Dimension."

" But," said the Medical Man,
staring hard at a coal in the fire, " if
Time is really only a fourth dimen-
sion of Space, why is it, and why has
it always been, regarded as something
different ? And why cannot we move
about in Time as we move about in
the other dimensions of Space ? "

The Philosophical Person smiled.
" Are you so sure we can move freely
in Space? Right and left we can
go, backward and forward freely
enough, and men always have done
so. I admit we move freely in two
dimensions. But now about up and
down ? Gravitation limits us there."

12 THE TIME MACHINE..

" Not exactly," said the Medical
Man. " There are balloons."

" But before the balloons, save for
spasmodic jumping and the inequali-
ties of the surface, man had no free-
dom of vertical movement."

" Still they could move a little up
and down," said the Medical Man.

" Easier, far easier, down than
up."

*' And you cannot move at all in
Time. You cannot get away from
the present moment."

" My dear sir, that is just where
you are wrong. That is just where
the whole world has gone wrong.
We are always getting away from
the present moment. Our mental
existences, which are immaterial
and have no dimensions, are passing
along the Time Dimension with a
uniform velocity from the cradle to
the grave. Just as we should travel
down if we began our existence fifty
miles above the earth's surface."

"But the great difficulty is this,"

THE INVENTOR. 13

interrupted the Psychologist : "You
can move about in all directions of
Space, but you cannot move about
in Time."

" That is the germ of my great dis-
covery. But you are wrong to say
that we cannot move about in Time.
For instance, if I am recalling an in-
cident very vividly I go back to the
instant of its occurrence ; I become
absent-minded, as you say. I jump
back for a moment. Of course we
have no means of staying back for any
length of time any more than a sav-
age or an animal has of staying six
feet above the ground. But a civil-
ized man is better off than the savage
in this respect. He can go up against
gravitation in a balloon, and why
should we not hope that ultimately
he may be able to stop or accelerate
his drift along the Time Dimension ;
or even to turn about and travel the
other way ? "

"Oh, this;' began Filby, "is
all "

14 THE TIME MACHINE.

" Why not ? " said the Philosoph-
ical Inventor.

" It's against reason," said Filby.

"What reason?" said the Philo-
sophical Inventor.

" You can show black is white by
argument," said Filby, "but you will
never convince me."

" Possibly not," said the Philosophi-
cal Inventor. " But now you begin
to see the object of my investigations
into the geometry of Four Dimen-
sions. Long ago I had a vague ink-
ling of a machine "

" To travel through Time ! " said
the Very Young Man.

" That shall travel indifferently in
any direction of Space and Time, as
the driver determines."

Filby contented himself with laugh-
ter.

" It would be remarkably con-
venient," the Psychologist suggested.
" One might travel back and witness
the battle of Hastings."

" Don't you think you would at-

THE INVENTOR. *5

tract attention?" said the Medical
Man. *' Our ancestors had no great
tolerance for anachronisms."

" One might get one's Greek from
the very lips of Homer and Plato,"
the Very Young Man thought.

" In which case they would cer-
tainly plow you for the little-go.
The German scholars have improved
Greek so much."

'' Then, there is the future," said
the Very Young Man. " Just think !
One might invest all one's money,
leave it to accumulate at interest,
and hurry on ahead."

"To discover a society," said I,
" erected on a strictly communistic

basis."

" Of all the wild extravagant
theories " began the Psychologist.

" Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I
never talked of it until "

" Experimental verification ! " cried
I. " You are going to verify that! "

" The experiment ! " cried Filby,
who was getting brain-weary.

1 6 THE TIME MACHINE.

" Let's see your experiment, any-
how," said the Psychologist, " though
it's all humbug, you know."

The Time Traveler smiled round
at us. Then, still smiling faintly,
and with his hands deep in his
trousers pockets, he walked slowly
out of the room, and we heard his
slippers shuffling down the long pas-
sage to his laboratory.

The Psychologist looked at us.
'* I wonder what he's got ? "

"Some sleight-of-hand trick or
other," said the Medical Man, and
Filby tried to tell us about a conjuror
he had seen at Burslem, but before he
had finished his preface the Time
Traveler came back, and Filby's
anecdote collapsed.

The thing the Time Traveler held
in his hand was a glittering metallic
framework, scarcely larger than a
small clock, and very delicately made.
There was ivory in it, and some
transparent crystalline substance.
And now I must be explicit, for

THE INVENTOR. 17

this that follows — unless his explan-
ation is to be accepted — is an abso-
lutely unaccountable thing. He took
one of the small octagonal tables
that were scattered about the room,
and set it in front of the fire, with
two legs on the hearthrug. On this
table he placed the mechanism.
Then he drew up a chair and sat
down. The only other object on the
table was a small shaded lamp, the
bright light of which fell full upon
the model. There were also perhaps
a dozen candles about, two in brass
candlesticks upon the mantel and
several in sconces, so that the room
was brilliantly illuminated. I sat in
a low armchair nearest the fire, and I
drew this forward so as to be almost
between the Time Traveler and the
fireplace. Filby sat behind him,
looking over his shoulder. The
Medical Man and the Rector
watched him in profile from the
right, the Psychologist from the left.
We were all on the alert. It ap-

l8 THE TIME MACHINE.

pears incredible to me that any kind
of trick, however subtly conceived
and however adroitly done, could
have been played upon us under
these conditions.

The Time Traveler looked at us
and then at the mechanism.

" Well ? " said the Psychologist.

" This little affair," said the Time
Traveler, resting his elbows upon the
table and pressing his hands together
above the apparatus, '* is only a
model. It is my plan for a machine
to travel through Time. You will
notice that it looks singularly askew,
and that there is an odd twinkling
appearance about this bar, as though
it was in some way unreal." He
pointed to the part with his finger.
" Also, here is one little white lever,
and here is another."

The Medical Man got up out of
his chair and peered into the thing.
"It's beautifully made," he said.

" It took two years to make," re-
torted the Time Traveler. Then,

THE INVENTOR. IQ

when we had all done as the Medical
Man, he said : " Now I want you
clearly to understand that this lever,
being pressed over, sends the machine
gliding into the future, and this other
reverses the motion. This saddle
represents the seat of a time traveler.
Presently I am going to press the
lever, and off the machine will go.
It will vanish, pass into future time,
and disappear. Have a good look at
the thing. Look at the table too,
and satisfy yourselves there is no
trickery. I don't want to waste this
model, and then be told I'm a
quack."

There was a minute's pause
perhaps. The Psychologist seemed
about to speak to me, but changed
his mind. Then the Time Traveler
put forth his finger toward the lever.
*' No," he said suddenly ; " lend
me your hand." And turning to the
Psychologist, he took that individual's
hand in his own and told him to put
out his forefinger. So that it was

20 THE TIME MACHINE.

the Psychologist himself who sent
forth the model Time Machine on
its interminable voyage. We all saw
the lever turn. I am absolutely cer-
tain there was no trickery. There
was a breath of wind, and the lamp
flame jumped. One of the candles
on the mantel was blown out, and
the little machine suddenly swung
round, became indistinct, was seen as
a ghost for a second perhaps, as an
eddy of faintly glittering brass and
ivory ; and it was gone — vanished !
Save for the lamp the table was bare.

Everyone was silent for a minute.
Then Filby said he was d d.

The Psychologist recovered from
his stupor, and suddenly looked
under the table. At that the
Time Traveler laughed cheerfully.
" Well ? " he said, with a reminis-
cence of the Psychologist. Then,
getting up, he went to the tobacco
jar on the mantel, and with his back
to us began to fill his pipe.

AVe stared at each other.

THE INVENTOR. 21

"Look here," said the Medical
Man, '*are you in earnest about this ?
Do you seriously believe that that
machine has traveled into Time ? "

'* Certainly," said the Time Trav-
eler, stooping to light a spill at the
fire. Then he turned, lighting his
pipe, to look at the Psychologist's
face. (The Psychologist, to show
that he was not unhinged, helped
himself to a cigar and tried to light
it uncut.) *' What is more, I have a
big machine nearly finished in there,"
— he indicated the laboratory, — " and
when that is put together I mean to
have a journey on my own account."

** You mean to say that that ma-
chine has traveled into the future ?"
said Filby.

" Into the future or the past — I
don't, for certain, know which."

After an interval the Psychologist
had an inspiration.

" It must have gone into the past
if it has gone anywhere," he said.

" Why ? " said the Time Traveler.

22 THE TIME MACHINE.

" Because I presume that it has
not moved in space, and if it traveled
into the future it would still be here
all this time, since it must have
traveled through this time."

" But," said I, '' if it traveled into
the past it would have been visible
when we came first into this room ;
and last Thursday when we were
here ; and the Thursday before that ;
and so forth ! "

" Serious objections," remarked
the Rector with an air of impartiality,
turning toward the Time Traveler.

" Not a bit," said the Time
Traveler, and, to the Psychologist :
** You think. You can explain that.
It's presentation below the threshold,
you know, diluted presentation."

" Of course," said the Psychologist,
and reassured us. '* That's a simple
point in psychology. I should have
thought of it. It's plain enough, and
helps the paradox delightfully. We
cannot see it, nor can we appreciate
this machine, any more than we can

THE INVENTOR, 23

the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a
bullet flying through the air. If it is
traveling through time fifty times or
a hundred times faster than we are,
if it gets through a minute while we
get through a second, the impression
it creates will of course be only one-
fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it
would make if it were not traveling
in time. That's plain enough." He
passed his hand through the space in
which the machine had been. " You
see ? " he said laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant
table for a minute or so. Then the
Time Traveler asked us what we
thought of it all.

" It sounds plausible enough to-
night," said the Medical Man ; "but
wait until to-morrow. Wait for the
common sense of the morning."

*' Would you like to see the Time
Machine itself ? " asked the Time
Traveler. And therewith, taking the
lamp in his hand, he led the way
down the long, draughty corridor to

24 THE TIME MACHINE.

his laboratory. I remember vividly
the flickering light, his queer, broad
head in silhouette, the dance of the
shadows, how we all followed him,
puzzled but incredulous, and how
there in the laboratory we beheld a
larger edition of the little mechanism
which we had seen vanish from be-
fore our eyes. Parts were of nickel,
parts of ivory, parts had certainly
been filed or sawn out of rock crystal.
The thing was generally complete,
but the twisted crystalline bars lay
unfinished upon the bench beside
some sheets of drawings, and I took
one up for a better look at it.
Quartz it seemed to be.

" Look here," said the Medical
Man, "are you perfectly serious?
Or is this a trick — like that ghost
you showed us last Christmas ? "

" Upon that machine," said the
Time Traveler, holding the lamp
aloft, " I intend to explore Time. Is
that plain ? I was never more serious
in my life."

CHAPTER II.
XLhc tlime traveler IReturns*

THINK that at that time
none of us quite believed

in the Time Machine.

The fact is, the Time Traveler was
one of those men who are too
clever to be believed ; you never
felt that you saw all round him ; you
always suspected some subtle re-
serve, some ingenuity in ambush, be-
hind his lucid frankness. Had Filby
shown the model and explained the
matter in the Time Traveler's words,
we should have shown Mm far less
skepticism. The point is, we should
have seen his motives — a pork-
butcher could understand Filby.
But the Time Traveler had more
than a touch of whim among his
elements, and we distrusted him.
Things that would have made the
fame of a clever man seemed tricks

25

26 THE TIME MACHINE,

in his hands. It is a mistake to do
things too easily. The serious peo-
ple who took him seriously never felt
quite sure of his deportment ; they
were somehow aware that trusting
their reputations for judgment with
him was like furnishing a nursery
with eggshell china. So I don't
think any of us said very much about
time traveling in the interval between
that Thursday and the next, though
its odd potentialities ran, no doubt,
in most of our minds : its plausibility,
that is, its practical incredibleness,
the curious possibilities of anachro-
nism and of utter confusion it sug-
gested. For my own part, I was
particularly preoccupied with the
trick of the model. That I remem-
ber discussing with the Medical Man,
whom I met on Friday at the Lin-
nsean. He said he had seen a similar
thing at Tubingen, and laid consider-
able stress on the blowing-out of the
candle. But how the trick was done
he could not explain.

THE TIME TRAVELER RETURNS. 27

The next Thursday I went again
to Richmond — I suppose I was one
of the Time Traveler's most constant
guests — and, arriving late, found four
or five men already assembled in his
drawing room. The Medical Man
was standing before the fire with a
sheet of paper in one hand and his
watch in the other. I looked round
for the Time Traveler, and — -

" It's half-past seven now," said
the Medical Man. " I suppose we'd
better have dinner ? "

** Where's ?" said I, naming

our host.

"You've just come? It's rather
odd. He's unavoidably detained.
He asks me in his note to lead off
with dinner at seven if he's not back.
Says he'll explain when he comes."

" It's seems a pity to let the dinner
spoil," said the Editor of a well-
known daily paper ; and thereupon
the Doctor rang the bell.

The Psychologist was the only per-
son besides the Doctor and myself

28 THE TIME MACHINE.

who had attended the previous din-
ner. The other men were Blank, the
Editor afore-mentioned, a certain
journalist, and another — a quiet, shy
man with a beard — whom I didn't
know, and who, as far as my observa-
tion went, never opened his mouth
all the evening. There was some
speculation at the dinner-table about
the Time Traveler's absence, and I
suggested time traveling, in a half-
jocular spirit. The Editor wanted
that explained to him, and the Psy-
chologist volunteered a wooden ac-
count of the " ingenious paradox and
trick " we had witnessed that day
week. He was in the midst of his
exposition when the door from the
corridor opened slowly and without
noise. I was facing the door, and
saw it first.

"Hallo!" I said. "At last!"
And the door opened wider, and
the Time Traveler stood before us.
I gave a cry of surprise.

" Good Heavens, man ! what's the

THE TIME TRAVELER RETURNS. 29

matter ? " cried the Medical Man,
who saw him next. And the whole
tableful turned toward the door.

He was in an amazing pHght. His
coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared
with green down the sleeves ; his
hair disordered, and as it seemed to
me grayer — either with dust and dirt
or because its color had actually
faded. His face was ghastly pale ;
his chin had a brown cut on it— a
cut half-healed ; his expression was
haggard and drawn, as by intense
suffering. For a moment he liesitated
in the doorway, as if he had been
dazzled by the light. Then he came
into the room. He walked with just
such a limp as I have seen in foot-
sore tramps. We stared at him in
silence, expecting him to speak.

He said not a word, but came pain-
fully to the table, and made a motion
toward the wine. The Editor filled
a glass of champagne and pushed it
toward him. He drained it, and it
seemed to do him good ; for he looked

30 THE TIME MACHINE.

round the table, and the ghost of his
old smile flickered across his face.

" What on earth have you been up
to, man ? " said the Doctor.

The Time Traveler did not seem to
hear. " Don't let me disturb you," he
said, with a certain faltering articula-
tion. " I'm all right." He stopped,
held out his glass for more, and took it
off at a draught. " That's good," he
said. His eyes grew brighter, and a
faint color came into his cheeks. His
glance flickered over our faces with
a certain dull approval, and then went
round the warm and comfortable
room. Then he spoke again, still as
it were feeling his way among his
words. *' I'm going to wash and
dress, and then I'll come down and
explain things. Save me some of
that mutton. I'm starving for a bit
of meat."

He looked across at the Editor,
who was a rare visitor, and hoped he
was all right. The Editor began a
question.

THE TIME TRAVELER RETURNS. 31

** Tell you presently," said the Time
Traveler. ''I'm — funny! Be all
right in a minute."

He put down his glass, and walked
toward the staircase door. Again I
remarked his lameness and the soft
padding sound of his footfall, and
standing up in my place I saw his
feet as he went out. He had nothing
on them but a pair of tattered, blood-
stained socks. Then the door closed
upon him. I had half a mind to fol-
low, till I remembered how he de-
tested any fuss about himself. For a
minute, perhaps, my mind was wool
gathering. Then, " Remarkable Be-
havior of an Eminent Scientist," I
heard the Editor say, thinking (after
his wont) in headlines. And this
brought my attention back to the
bright dinner table.

" What's the game ? " said the
Journalist. " Has he been doing the
Amateur Cadger ? I don't follow."

I met the eye of the Psychologist,
and read my own interpretation in

32 THE TIME MACHINE.

his face. I thought of the Time
Traveler limping painfully upstairs.
I don't think anyone else had noticed
his lameness.

The first to recover completely
from this surprise was the Medical
Man, who rang the bell — the Time
Traveler hated to have servants wait-
ing at dinner — for a hot plate. At
that the Editor turned to his knife
and fork with a grunt, and the Silent
Man followed suit. The dinner was
resumed. Conversation was exclam-
atory for a little while, with gaps of
wonderment ; and then the Editor
got fervent in his curiosity.

" Does our friend eke out his mod-
est income with a crossing, or has he
his Nebuchadnezzar phases ? " he
inquired.

" I feel assured it's this business of
the Time Machine," I said, and took
up the Psychologist's account of our
previous meeting.

The new guests were frankly incred-
ulous. The Editor raised objections.

THE TIME TRAVELER RETURNS. 33

" What was this time traveling ?
A man couldn'tcover himself with dust
by rolling in a paradox, could he?"

And then, as the idea came home to
him, he resorted to caricature. Hadn't
they any clothes-brushes in the Future?
The Journalist, too, would not be-
lieve at any price, and joined the
Editor in the easy work of heaping
ridicule on the whole thing. They
were both the new kind of Journalist
— very joyous, irreverent young men.
" Our Special Correspondent in the
Day After To-Morrow reports," the
Journalist was saying — or rather
shouting — when the Time Traveler
came back. He was dressed in ordi-
nary evening clothes, and nothing
save his haggard look remained of
the change that had startled me.

"I say," said the Editor hilariously,
" these chaps here say you have
been traveling into the middle of
next week ! Tell us all about little
Rosebery, will you ? What will you
take for the lot ? "

34 THE TIME MACHINE.

The Time Traveler came to the
place reserved for him without a
word. He smiled quietly, in his old
way.

" Where's ray mutton ? " he said.
•* What a treat it is to stick a fork
into meat again ! "

*' Story !" cried the Editor.

''Story be d d !" said the Time

Traveler. " I want something to eat.
I won't say a word until I get some
peptone into my arteries. Thanks .'
And the salt."

"One word," said I. *' Have you
been time traveling ?"

" Yes," said the Time Traveler,
with his mouth full, nodding his head.

" I'd give a shilling a line for a
verbatim note," said the Editor. The
Time Traveler pushed his glass
toward the Silent Man and rang it
with his finger nail ; at which the
Silent Man, who had been staring
at his face, started convulsively, and
poured him wine. The rest of the
dinner was uncomfortable. For my

THE TIME TRAVELER RETURNS. 35

own part, sudden questions kept on
rising to my lips, and I dare say it
was the same with the others. The
Journalist tried to relieve the tension
by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter.
The Time Traveler devoted his at-
tention to his dinner, and displayed
the appetite of a tramp. The Medi-
cal Man smoked a cigarette, and
watched the Time Traveler through
his eyelashes. The Silent Man
seemed even more clumsy than usual,
and drank champagne with regularity
and determination out of sheer nerv-
ousness. At last the Time Traveler
pushed his plate away, and looked
round us.

"I suppose I must apologize,"
he said. " I was simply starving.
I've had a most amazing time." He
reached out his hand for a cigar,
and cut the end. " But come into
the smoking room. It's too long a
story to tell over greasy plates." And
ringing the bell in passing, he led the
way into the adjoining room.

36 THE TIME MACHINE.

" You have told Blank and Dash
and Chose about the machine?" he
said to me, leaning back in his easy-
chair and naming the three new-
guests.

" But the thing's a mere paradox,"
said the Editor.

*' I can't argue to-night. I don't
mind telling you the story, but I can't
argue. I will," he went on, *' tell
you the story of what has happened
to me, if you like, but you must re-
frain from interruptions. I want to
tell it. Badly. Most of it will
sound like lying. So be it ! It's
true^— every word of it, all the same.
I was in my laboratory at four

o'clock, and since then I've

lived eight days — such days as no
human being ever lived before !
I'm nearly worn out, but I shan't
sleep till I've told this thing over to
you. Then I shall go to bed. But
no interruptions ! Is it agreed ? "

" Agreed !" said the Editor, and
the rest of us echoed " Agreed ! "

THE TIME TRAVELER RETURNS. 37

And with that the Time Traveler
began his story as I have set it forth.
He sat back in his chair at first, and
spoke like a weary man. Afterward
he got more animated. In writing it
down I feel with only too much keen-
ness the inadequacy of pen and ink —
and, above all, my own inadequacy —
to express its quality. You read, I
will suppose, attentively enough ; but
you cannot see the speaker's white,
sincere face in the bright circle of the
little lamp, nor hear the intonation
of his voice. You cannot know how
his expression followed the turns of
his story ! Most of us hearers were
in shadow, for the candles in the
smoking room had not been lighted,
and only the face of the Journalist
and the legs of the Silent Man from
the knees downward were illumin-
ated. At first we glanced now and
again at each other. After a time we
ceased to do that, and looked only
at the Time Traveler's face.

CHAPTER III.

TOLD some of you last
Thursday of the principles
of the Time Machine, and
showed you the actual thing itself,
incomplete, in the workshop. There
it is now, a little travel-worn, truly ;
and one of the ivory bars is cracked,
and a brass rail bent ; but the rest of
it is sound enough. I expected to
finish it on Friday ; but on Friday,
when the putting together was nearly
done, I found that one of the nickel
bars was exactly one inch too short,
and this I had to get re-made ; so
that the thing was not complete until
this morning. It was at ten o'clock
to-day that the first of all Time Ma-
chines began its career. I gave it
a last tap, tried all the screws again,
38

THE STORY BEGINS. 39

put one more drop of oil on the
quartz rod, and sat myself in the
saddle. I suppose a suicide who
holds a pistol to his skull feels much
the same wonder at what will come
next as I felt then. I took the start-
ing lever in one hand and the stop-
ping one in the other, pressed the
first, and almost immediately the
second. I seemed to reel ; I felt a
nightmare sensation of falling ; and,
looking round, I saw the laboratory
exactly as before. Had anything
happened ? For a moment I sus-
pected that my intellect had tricked
me. Then I noted the clock. A
moment before, as it seemed, it had
stood at a minute or so past ten ;
now it was nearly half-past three !

** I drew a breath, set my teeth,
gripped the starting lever with both
my hands, and went off with a thud.
The laboratory got hazy and went
dark. Mrs. Watchett came in, and
walked, apparently without seeing
me, toward the garden door. I sup-

40 THE TIME MACHINE.

pose it took her a minute or so to
traverse the place, but to me she
seemed to shoot across the room Uke
a rocket. I pressed the lever over
to its extreme position. The night
came like the turning out of a lamp,
and in another moment came to-
morrow. The laboratory grew faint
and hazy, then fainter and ever
fainter. To-morrow night came
black, then day again, night again,
day again, faster and faster still. An
eddying murmur filled my ears and
a strange, dumb confusedness de-
scended on my mind.

" I am afraid I cannot convey the
peculiar sensations of time-traveling.
They are excessively unpleasant.
There is a feeling exactly like that
one has upon a switchback — of a
helpless headlong motion ! I felt the
same horrible anticipation, too, of
an imminent smash. [As I put on
pace, day followed night, like the
flap, flap, flap of some rotating body.
The dim suggestion of the laboratory

THE STORY BEGINS. 41

seemed presently to fall away from
me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly
across the sky, leaping it every
minute, and every minute marking a
day. I supposed the laboratory had
been destroyed, and I had come into
the open air. | I had a dim impression
of scaffolding, but I was already go-
ing too fast to be conscious of any
moving things. The slowest snail
that ever crawled dashed by too fast
for me. The twinkling succession of
darkness and light was excessively
painful to the eye. Then in the
intermittent darkness, I saw the
moon spinning swiftly through her
quarters from new to full, and had a
faint glimpse of the circling stars.
Presently, as I went on, still gaining
velocity, the palpitation of night and
day merged into one continuous
grayness ; the sky took on a wonder-
ful deepness of blue, a splendid lumi-
nous color like that of early twilight ;
the jerking sun became a streak of
fire, a brilliant arch in space, the

42 THE TIME MACHINE.

moon a fainter fluctuating band ; and
I could see nothing of the stars, save
now and then a brighter circle flicker-
ing in the blue.

\ *'The landscape was misty and
vague. I was still on the hillside
upon which this house now stands,
and the shoulder rose above me gray
and dim. I saw trees growing and
changing like puffs of vapor, now
brown, now green ; they grew,
spread, fluctuated, and passed away.
I saw huge buildings rise up faint
and fair, and pass like dreams. The
whole surface of the earth seemed
changing — melting and flowing under
my eyes. \ The little hands upon the
dials that registered my speed raced
round faster and faster. Presently I
noted that the sun belt swayed up and
down, from solstice to solstice, in a
minute or less, and that, conse-
quently, my pace was over a year
a minute ; and minute by minute
the white snow flashed across the
world and vanished, and was fol-

THE STORY BEGINS. 43

lowed by the bright, brief green of
spring.

*' The unpleasant sensations of the
start were less poignant now. They
merged at last into a kind of hyster-
ical exhilaration. I remarked, in-
deed, a clumsy swaying of the
machine, for which I was unable to
account. But my mind was too
confused to attend to it, so with a
kind of madness growing upon me
I flung myself into futurity. At first
I scarce thought of stopping, scarce
thought of anything but these new
sensations. But presently a fresh
series of impressions grew up in my
mind, — a certain curiosity, and there-
with a certain dread, — until they at
last took complete possession of me.
What strange developments of hu-
manity, what wonderful advances
upon our rudimentary civilization, I
thought, might not appear when I
came to look nearly into the dim,
elusive world that raced and fluctu-
ated before my eyes ! I saw great

44 THE TIME MACHINE.

and splendid architectures rising
about me, more massive than any
buildings of our own time, and yet,
as it seemed, built of glimmer and
mist. I saw a richer green flow up
the hillside, and remain there with-
out any wintry intermission. Even
through the veil of my confusion the
earth seemed very fair. And so my
mind came round to the business of
stopping.

*' The peculiar risk lay in the pos-
sibility of my finding some substance
in the space which I, or the machine,
occupied. So long as I traveled at
a high velocity through time, this
scarcely mattered : I was, so to
speak, attenuated — was slipping like
a vapor through the interstices of
intervening substances ! But to
come to a stop involved the jamming
of myself, molecule by molecule, into
whatever lay in my way, meant
bringing my atoms into such in-
timate contact with those of the
obstacle that a profound chemical

THE STORY BEGINS. 45

reaction — possibly a far-reaching
explosion — would result, and blow
myself and my apparatus out of the
Rigid Universe — out of all possible
dimensions — into the Unknown. This
possibility had occurred to me again
and again while I was making the
machine ; but then I had cheerfully
accepted it as an unavoidable risk-
one of the risks a man has got to
take ! Now the risk was inevitable,
I no longer saw it in the same cheer-
ful hght. The fact is that, insen-
sibly, the absolute strangeness of
everything, the sickly jarring and
swaying of the machine, above all
the feeling of prolonged falling, had
absolutely upset my nerve. I told
myself that I could never stop, and
with a gust of petulance I resolved
to stop forthwith. Like an impatient
fool, I lugged over the lever, and
incontinently the thing went reeling
over, and I was flung headlong
through the air

" There was the sound of a clap

46 THE TIME MACHINE.

of thunder in my ears. I may have
been stunned for a moment. A pit-
iless hail was hissing round me, and
I was sitting on soft turf in front
of the overset machine. Everything
still seemed gray, but presently I
remarked that the confusion in my
ears was gone. I looked round me.
I was on what seemed to be a little
lawn in a garden, surrounded by
rhododendron bushes, and I noticed
that their mauve and purple blos-
soms were dropping in a shower un-
der the beating of the hailstones.
The rebounding, dancing hail hung
in a little cloud over the machine,
and drove along the ground like
smoke. In a moment I was wet to
the skin. ' Fine hospitality,' said I,
* to a man who has traveled innumer-
able years to see you ! '

" Presently I thought what a fool
I was to get wet. I stood up and
looked round me. A colossal figure,
carved apparently in some white
stone, loomed indistinctly beyond

THE STORY BEGINS. 47

the rhododendrons through the hazy-
downpour. But all else of the world
was invisible.

" My sensations would be hard to
describe. As the columns of hail
grew thinner, I saw the white fig-
ure more distinctly. It was very
large, for a silver birch tree touched
its shoulder. It was of white marble,
in shape something like a winged
sphinx, but the wings, instead of
being carried vertically at the sides,
were spread so that it seemed to
hover. The pedestal, it appeared to
me, was of bronze, and was thick
with verdigris. It chanced that the
face was toward me ; the sightless
eyes seemed to watch me ; there was
the faint shadow of a smile on the
lips. It was greatly weatherworn,
and that imparted an unpleasant sug-
gestion of disease. I stood looking
at it for a little space — half a minute,
perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed
to advance and to recede as the hail
drove before it denser or thinner.

48 THE TIME MACHINE.

At last I tore my eyes from it for a
moment, and saw that the hail cur-
tain had worn threadbare, and that
the sky was lightening with the prom-
ise of the sun.

" I looked up again at the crouch-
ing v/hite shape, and the full te-
merity of my voyage came suddenly
upon me. What might appear when
that hazy curtain was altogether
withdrawn ? What might not have
happened to men ? What if cruelty
had grown into a common passion ?
What if in this interval the race had
lost its manliness, and had developed
into something inhuman, unsympa-
thetic, and overwhelmingly powerful ?
I might seem some old-world savage
animal, only the more dreadful and
disgusting for our common likeness —
a foul creature to be incontinently
slain.

" Already I saw other vast shapes
— huge buildings with intricate para-
pets and tall columns, with a wooded
hillside dimly creeping in upon me

THE STORY BEGINS. 49

through the lessening storm. I was
seized with a panic fear. I turned
frantically to the Time Machine, and
strove hard to readjust it. As I did
so the shafts of the sun smote through
the thunderstorm. The gray down-
pour was swept aside and vanished
like the trailing garments of a ghost.
Above me, in the intense blue of
the summer sky, some faint brown
shreds of clouds whirled into noth-
ingness. The great buildings about
me stood out clear and distinct, shin-
ing with the wet of the thunderstorm,
and picked out in white by the un-
melted hailstones piled along their
courses. I felt naked in a strange
world. I felt as perhaps a bird may
feel in the clear air, knowing the
hawk wings above and will swoop. My
fear grew to frenzy. I took a breath-
ing space, set my teeth, and again
grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with
the machine. It gave under my des-
perate onset and turned over. It
struck my chin violently. One hand

50 THE TIME MACHINE.

on the saddle, the other on the lever,
I stood panting heavily in attitude to
mount again.

"But with fhis recovery of a
prompt retreat my courage recovered.
I looked more curiously and less fear-
fully at this world of the remote
future. In a circular opening, high
up in the wall of the nearer house, I
saw a group of figures clad in rich
soft robes. They had seen me, and
their faces were directed toward me.

" Then I heard voices approaching
me. Coming through the bushes by
the white sphinx were the heads and
shoulders of men running. One of
these emerged in a pathway leading
straight to the little lawn upon which
I stood with my machine. He was
a slight creature — perhaps four feet
high — clad in a purple tunic, girdled
at the waist with a leather belt. San-
dals or buskins — I could not clearly
distinguish which — whereon his feet ;
his legs were bare to the knees, and
his head was bare. Noticing that, I

THE STORY BEGINS. 5^

noticed for the first time how warm
the air was.

" He struck me as being a very
beautiful and graceful creature, but
indescribably frail. His flushed face
reminded me of the more beautiful
kind of consumptive— that hectic
beauty of which we used to hear so
much. At the sight of him I sud-
denly regained confidence. I took
my hands from the machine.

CHAPTER IV.

^be (5olDen Bae.

N another moment we were
standing face to face, I and
this fragile thing out of
futurity. He came straight up to
me and laughed into my eyes. The
absence of any signof fear from his
bearing struck me at once. Then
he turned to the two others who
were following him and spoke to
them in a strange and very sweet
and liquid tongue.

"There were others coming, and
presently a little group of perhaps
eight or ten of these exquisite crea-
tures were about me. One of them
addressed me. It came into my
head, oddly enough, that my voice
was too harsh and deep for them. So
I shook my head, and pointing to my

52

THE GOLDEN AGE. 53

ears, shook it again. He came a step
forward, hesitated, and then touched
my hand. Then I felt other soft
little tentacles upon my back and
shoulders. They wanted to make
sure I was real. There was nothing
in this at all alarming. Indeed,
there was something in these pretty
little people that inspired confid-
ence— a graceful gentleness, a certain
childlike ease. And besides, they
looked so frail that I could fancy my-
self flinging the whole dozen of them
about like ninepins. But I made
a sudden motion to warn them when
I saw their little pink hands feeling
at the Time Machine. Happily then,
when it was not too late, I thought
of a danger I had hitherto forgotten,
and reaching over the bars of the
machine I unscrewed the little levers
that would set it in motion, and put
these in my pocket. Then I turned
again to see what I could do in the
way of communication.

"And then, looking more nearly

54 THE TIME MACHINE.

into their features, I saw some further
peculiarities in their Dresden china
type of prettiness. Their hair, which
was uniformly curly, came to a sharp
end at the neck and cheek ; there
was not the faintest suggestion of
it on the face, and their ears were
singularly minute. The mouths
were small, with bright red, rather
thin lips, and the little chins ran to
a point. The eyes were large and
mild ; and — this may seem egotism
on my part — I fancied even then that
there was a certain lack of the inter-
est I might have expected in them.

" As they made no effort to com-
municate with me, but simply stood
round me smiling and speaking in
soft cooing notes to each other, I
began the conversation. I pointed
to the Time Machine and to myself.
Then, hesitating for a moment how
to express Time, I pointed to the
sun. At once a quaintly pretty little
figure in checkered purple and white,
followed my gesture, and then aston-

THE GOLDEN AGE. 5S

ished me by imitating the sound of
thunder.

" For the moment I was staggered,
though the import of his gesture
was plain enough. The question
had come into my mind abruptly :
Were these creatures fools ? You may
hardly understand how it took me.
You see I had always anticipated
Jthat the people of the year Eight
Hundred Thousand odd would be
incredibly in front of us in knowl-
edge, art, everything. Then one of "v,
them suddenly asked me a question
that showed him to be on the intel-
lectual level of one of our five-year-
old children — asked me, in fact, if
I had come from the sun in a thun-
derstorm ! It let loose the judgment
I had suspended upon their clothes,
their frail, light limbs, and fragile
features. A flow of disappointment
rushed across my mind. For a mo-
ment I felt that I had built the Time
Machine in vain.

"I nodded, pointed to the sun,

\

56 THE TIME MACHINE.

and gave them such a vivid render-
ing of a thunderclap as startled them.
They all withdrew a pace or so and
bowed. Then came one laughing
toward me, carrying a chain of
beautiful flowers, altogether new to
me, and put it about my neck. The
idea was received with melodious
applause ; and presently they were
all running to and fro for flowers,
and laughingly flinging them upon
me until I was almost smothered
with blossom. You who have never
seen the like can scarcely imagine
what delicate and wonderful flowers
countless years of culture had
created. Then someone suggested
that their plaything should be ex-
hibited in the nearest building, and
so I was led past the sphinx of white
marble, which had seemed to watch
me all the while with a smile at my
astonishment, toward a vast gray
edifice of fretted stone. As I went
with them the memory of my confi-
dent anticipations of a profoundly

THE GOLDEN AGE. 57

grave and intellectual posterity came,
with irresistible merriment, to my
mind.

** The building had a large entry
and was altogether of colossal dimen-
sions. I was naturally most occu-
pied with the growing crowd of little
people, and with the big open portals
that yawned before me shadowy and
mysterious. My general impression
of the world I saw over their heads
was of a tangled waste of beautiful
bushes and flowers, a long neglected
and yet weedless garden. I saw
a number of tall spikes of strange
white flowers, measuring a foot per-
haps across the spread of the waxen
petals. They grew scattered, as if
wild, among the variegated shrubs,
but, as I say, I did not examine them
closely at this time. The Time
Machine was left deserted on the
turf among the rhododendrons.

" The arch of the doorway was
richly carved, but naturally I did
not observe the carving very nar-

58 THE TIME MACHINE.

rowly, though I fancied I saw sugges-
tions of old Phoenician decorations
as I passed through, and it struck me
that they were very badly broken and
weather-worn. Several more brightly
clad people met me in the doorway,
and so we entered, I, dressed in dingy
nineteenth century garments, looking
grotesque enough, garlanded with
flowers, and surrounded by an ed-
dying mass of bright, soft-colored
robes and shining white limbs, in
a melodious whirl of laughter and
laughing speech.

" The big doorway opened into a
proportionately great hall hung with
brown. The roof was in shadow, and
the windows, partially glazed with
colored glass, and partially unglazed,
admitted a tempered light. The
floor was made up of huge blocks of
some very hard white metal, not
plates nor slabs — blocks, and it was
so much worn, as I judged by the
going to and fro of past generations,
as to be deeply channeled along the

THE GOLDEN AGE. 59

more frequented ways. Transverse
to the length were innumerable tables
made of slabs of polished stone,
raised, perhaps, a foot from the floor,
and upon these were heaps of fruits.
Some I recognized as a kind of hyper-
trophied raspberry and orange, but
for the most part they were strange.

" Between the tables were scattered
a great number of cushions. Upon
these my conductors seated them-
selves, signing for me to do likewise.
With a pretty absence of ceremony
they began to eat the fruit with their
hands, flinging peel, and stalks, and so
forth, into the round openings in the
sides of the tables. I was not loth
to follow their example, for I felt
thirsty and hungry. As I did so I
surveyed the hall at my leisure.

" And perhaps the thing that struck
me most was its dilapidated look.
The stained-glass windows, which
displayed only a geometrical pat-
tern, were broken in many places,
and the curtains that hung across the

6o THE TIME MACHINE.

lower end were thick with dust.
And it caught my eye that the
corner of the marble table near me
was fractured. Nevertheless, the
general effect was extremely rich and
picturesque. There were, perhaps, a
couple of hundred people dining in
the hall, and most of them, seated as
near to me as they could come, were
watching me with interest, their little
eyes shining over the fruit they were
eating. All were clad in the same
'Soft, and yet strong, silky material.

** Fruit, by the bye, was all their
diet. These people of the remote
future were strict vegetarians, and
while I was with them, in spite of
some carnal cravings, I had to be
frugivorous also. Indeed, I found
afterward that horses, cattle, sheep,
dogs, had followed the ichthyosaurus
into extinction. But the fruits were
very delightful ; one, in particular,
that seemed to be in season all the
time I was there, — a floury thing in
a three-sided husk, — was especially

THE GOLDEN AGE. 6l

good, and I made it my staple. At
first I was puzzled by all these
strange fruits, and by the strange
flowers I saw, but later I began to
perceive their import.

" However, I am telling you of my
fruit dinner in the distant future now.
So soon as my appetite was a little
checked, I determined to make a
resolute attempt to learn the speech
of these new men of mine. Clearly
that was the next thing to do. The
fruits seemed a convenient thing to
begin upon, and holding one of these
up I began a series of interrogative
sounds and gestures. I had some
considerable difficulty in conveying
my meaning. At first my efforts met
with a stare of surprise or inextin-
guishable laughter, but presently a
fair-haired little creature seemed to
grasp my intention and repeated a
name. They had to chatter and
explain their business at great length
to each other, and my first attempts
to make their exquisite little sounds

62 THE TIME MACHINE.

of the language caused an immense
amount of genuine, if uncivil amuse-
ment. However, I felt like a school-
master amid children, and per-
sisted, and presently I had a score
of noun substantives at least, at my
command ; and then I got to demon-
strative pronouns, and even the verb
* to eat.' But it was slow work, and
the little people soon tired and
wanted to get away from my inter-
rogations, so I determined, rather of
necessity, to let them give their
lessons in little doses when they felt
inclined. And very little doses I
found they were before long, for I
never met people more indolent or
more easily fatigued.

•u

CHAPTER V.
Qnmct

QUEER thing I soon dis-
covered about my little
hosts, and that was their
lack of interest. They would come
to me with eager cries of astonish-
ment, like children, but, like children,
they would soon stop examining me,
and wander away after some other
toy. The dinner and my conversa-
tional beginnings ended, I noted for
the first time that almost all those
who had surrounded me at first were
gone. It is odd, too, how speedily
I came to disregard these little
people. I went out through the
portal into the sunlit world again as
soon as my hunger was satisfied. I
was continually meeting more of these
men of the future, who would follow
63

64 THE TIME MACHINE.

me a little distance, chatter and
laugh about me, and, having smiled
and gesticulated in a friendly way,
leave me again to my own devises.

" The calm of evening was upon
the world as I emerged from the
great hall, and the scene was lit by the
warm glow of the setting sun. At first
things were very confusing. Every^
thing was so entirely different from
the world I had known — even the
flowers. The big building I had left
was situated on the slope of a broad
river valley, but the Thames had
shifted, perhaps a mile from its
present position. I resolved to
mount to the summit of a crest, pos-
sibly a mile and a half away, from
which I could get a wider view of
this our planet in the year 802,701,^
A. D. For that, I should explain,
was the date the little dials of my
machine recorded.

** As 1 walked I was watchful of
every impression that could possibly
help to explain the condition of

SUNSET. 65

ruinous splendor in which I found
the world — for ruinous it was. A
little way up the hill, for instance,
was a great heap of granite, bound
together by masses of aluminum, a
vast labyrinth of precipitous walls
and crumbled heaps, amid which
were thick heaps of very beautiful
pagoda-like plants — nettles possibly,
but wonderfully tinted with brown
about the leaves, and incapable of
stinging. It was evidently the dere-
lict remains of some vast structure,
built to what end I could not deter-
mine. It was here that I was des-
tined, at a later date, to have a very
strange experience — the first intima-
tion of a still stranger discovery —
but of that I will speak in its proper
place.

" Looking round, with a sudden
thought, from a terrace on which I had
rested for a while, I realized that there
were no small houses to be seen.
Apparently the single house, and
possibly even the household, had

66 THE TIME MACHINE.

vanished. Here and there among
the greenery were palace-like build-
ings, but the house and the cottage,
which form such characteristic fea-
tures of our own English landscape,
had disappeared.

" * Communism,' said I to myself.

"And on the heels of that came

another thought. I looked at the

half dozen little figures that were \

following me. Then, in a flash, I J f^

perceived that all had the same form / (^

of costume, the same soft hairless ''

. . . \

visage, and the same girlish rotundity '^^

of limb. It may seem strange, per-
haps, that I had not noticed this
before. But everything was so
strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly
enough. In costume, and in all the
differences of texture and bearing
that now mark off the sex from each
other, these people of the future were
alike. And the children seemed to
my eyes to be but the miniatures of
their parents. I judged then that
children of that time were extremely

SUNSET. 67

precocious, physically at least, and I
found afterward abundant verifica-
tion of my opinion.

'' Seeing the ease and security in
which these people were living, 1 felt
that this close resemblance of the
sexes was, after all, what one would
expect ; for the strength of a man
and the softness of a woman, the in-
stitution of the family, and the differ-
entiation of occupations are mere
militant necessities of an age of
physical force. Where population is
balanced and abundant, much child-
bearing becomes an evil rather than
a blessing to the State ; where vio-
lence comes but rarely and offspring
are secure, there is less necessity — .
indeed there is, no .necessity— of an
efficient family, and the specialization /J'
-of the sexes with reference to their \
Qhildren's needs disappears. We see
some beginnings of this even in our
own time, and in this future age it was
complete. This, I must remind you,
was my speculation at the time.

68 THE TIME MACHINE.

Later, I was to appreciate how far it
fell short of the reality.

" While I was musing upon these
things, my attention was attracted by
a pretty little structure, like a well
under a cupola. I thought in a tran-
sitory way of the oddness of wells
still existing, and then resumed the
thread of my speculations. There
were no large buildings toward the
top of the hill, and as my walking
powers were evidently miraculous, I
was presently left alone for the first
time. With a strange sense of free-
dom and adventure I pushed up to
the crest.

" There I found a seat of some
yellow metal that I did not recognize,
corroded in places with a kind of
pinkish rust and half smothered in
soft moss, the arm rests cast and
filed into the resemblance of griffins'
heads. I sat down on it, and I sur-
veyed the broad view of our old
world under the sunset of that long
day. It was as sweet and fair a view

SUNSET. 69

as I have ever seen. The sun had„
already gone below the horizon and
the west was flaming gold, touched
with some horizontal bars of purple
and crimson. Below was the valley
of the Thames, in which the river
lay like a band of burnished steel.
I have ready spoken of the great
palaces dotted about among the
variegated greenery, some in ruins
and some still occupied. Here and
there rose a white or silvery figure in
the waste garden of the earth, here
and there came the sh.iirp vertical
line of some cupola or obelisk.
There were no hedges, no signs of
proprietary rights, no evidences of
agriculture ; the whole earth had
become a garden.

" So watching, I began to put my
interpretation upon the things I had
seen, and as it shaped itself to me that
evening, my interpretation was some-
thing in this way (afterward I found
I had got only a half truth, or only
a glimpse of one facet of the truth) :

^'

70 THE TIME MACHINE.

" It seemed to me that I had hap-
'^ pened upon" humanity upon the wane.
The ruddy sunset set me thinking of
the sunset of mankind. For the first
time I began to realize an odd con-
sequence of the social effort in which
we are at present engaged. And yet,
come to think, it is a logical conse-
quence enough. Strength is the
outcome of need ; security sets a
premium on feebleness. The work
of ameliorating the conditions of
life — the true civilizing process that
makes life more and more secure —
had gone steadily on to a climax.
One triumph of a united humanity
over Nature had followed another.
Things that are now mere dreams
had become projects deliberately put
in hand and carried forward. And
the harvest was what I saw !

" After all, the sanitation and the
agriculture of to-day are still in the
rudimentary stage. The science of
our time has attacked but a little de-
partment of the field of human dis-

SUNSET. 71

ease, but, even so, it spreads its
operations very steadily and persist-
ently. Our agriculture and horticul-
ture destroy just here and there a
weed and cultivate perhaps a score
or so of wholesome plants, leaving
the greater number to fight out a
balance as they can. We improve
our favorite plants and animals — and
how few they are — gradually by
selective breeding ; now a new and
better peach, now a seedless grape,
now a sweeter and larger flower, now
a more convenient breed of cattle.
We improve them gradually, because
our ideals are vague and tentative,
and our knowledge is very limited ;
because Nature, too, is shy and slow
in our clumsy hands. Some day all
this will be better organized, and still
better. That is the drift of the cur-
rent in spite of the eddies. The
whole world will be intelligent, edu-
cated, and co-operating ; things will
move faster and faster toward the
subjugation of Nature. In the end,

72 THE TIME MACHINE.

wisely and carefully we shall read-
just the balance of animal and vege-
table life to suit our human needs.

" This adjustment, I say, must have
been done, and done well : done in-
deed for all time, in the space of
Time across which my machine had
leaped. The air was free from gnats,
the earth from weeds or fungi ; every-
where were fruits and sweet and
delightful flowers ; brilliant butter-
flies flew hither and thither. The
ideal of preventive medicine was
attained. Diseases had been stamped
out. I saw no evidence of any con-
tagious diseases during all my stay.
And I shall have to tell you later that
even the processes of putrefaction
and decay had been profoundly
affected by these changes.

" Social triumphs, too, had been
effected. I saw mankind housed in
splendid shelters, gloriously clothed,
and as yet I had found them engaged
in no toil. There were no signs of
struggle, neither social nor economi-

SUNSET. 73

cal struggle. The shop, the adver-
tisement, traffic, all that commerce
which constitutes the body of our
world, was gone. It was natural on
that golden evening that I should
jump at the idea of a social paradiae.

" The difficulty of increasing popu-|
lation had been met, I guessed, anq|
population had ceased to increase. '1

'' But with this change in condition
comes inevitably adaptations to the
change. What, unless biological
science is a mass of errors, is the
cause of human intelligence and L

vigor ? Hardship and freedom : t}^^'*^^af
conditions under which the active, v
strong, and subtle survive and the ij.

weaker go to the wall ; conditions
that put a premium upon the loyal
alliance of capable men, upon self-
restraint, patience, and decision. And
the institution of the family, and the
emotions that arise therein, the fierce
jealousy, the tenderness for offspring,
parental self-devotion, all found their
justification and support in the immi-

74 THE TIME MACHINE.

nent dangers of the young. Now,
where are those imminent dangers ?
There is a sentiment arising, and it
will grow, against connubial jealousy,
against fierce maternity, against pas-
sion of all sorts ; unnecessary things
now, and things that make us uncom-
fortable, savage survivals, discords in
a refined and pleasant life.

'' I thought of the physical slight-
ness of the people, their lack of in-
telligence, and those big abundant
ruins, and it strengthened my belief
in a gpilect c^^quest of Nature.
For after the battle comes Quiet.
Humanity had been strong, energetic,
and intelligent, and had used all its
abundant vitality to alter the condi-
tions under which it lived. And
now came the -reaction of the altered
conditions.'

" Under the new conditions of per-
fect comfort and security, that rest-
less energy, that with us is strength,
would become weakness. Even in
our own time certain tendencies and

SUNSET. 75

desires, once necessary to survival,
are a constant source of failure.
Physical courage and the love of
battle, for instance, are no great help
— may even be hindrances — to a
civilized man. And in a state of
physical balance and security, power,
intellectual as well as physical, would
be out of place. For countless years
I judged there had beeniio danger'
of war or solitary violence, no danger
from wild beasts, no wasting disease.
to require strength of constitution,!
no need of toil. For such a life,?
what we should call the weak are asi
well equipped as the strong, are,
indeed, no longer weak. Better
equipped indeed they are, for the
strong would be fretted by an energy
for which there was no outlet. No
doubt the exquisite beauty of the
buildings I saw was the outcome of
the last surgings of the now purpose-
less energy of mankind before it
settled down into perfect harmony
with the conditions under which it

76 THE TIME MACHINE.

lived — the flourish of that triumph

which began the last great peace.

-t" This has ever been the fate of energy

! in security ; it takes to art and to

J eroticism, and then come languor

i_and decay.

" Even this artistic impetus would
at last die away — had almost died in
the Time I saw. To adorn them-
selves with flowers, to dance, to sing
in the sunlight ; so much was left
^ of the artistic spirit, and no more.
^^' / Even that would fade in the end
•^ / into a contented inactivity. We are
kept keen on the grindstone of pain
and necessity, and it seemed to me
that here was that hateful grindstone
broken at last !

" As I stood there in the gathering
dark I thought that in this simple ex-
planation I had mastered the problem
of the world — mastered the whole
secret of these delicious people.
Possibly the checks they had devised
for the increase of population had
succeeded too well, and their num-

SUNSET. 77

bers had rather diminished than kept
stationary. That would account for
the abandoned ruins. Very simple
was my explanation, and plausible
enough — as most wrong theories are.

** As I stood there musing over this
too perfect triumph of man, the full
moon, yellow and gibbous, came up
out of an overflow of silver light in
the northeast. The bright little fig-
ure ceased to move about below, a
noiseless owl flitted by, and I shiv-
ered with the chill of the night. I
determined to descend and find where
I could sleep.

" I looked for the building I knew.
Then my eye traveled along to the
figure of the white sphinx upon the
pedestal of bronze, growing distinct
as the light of the rising moon grew
brighter. I could see the silver birch
against it. There was the tangle of
rhododendron bushes, black in the
pale light, and there was the little
lawn. I looked at the lawn again.
A queer doubt chilled my com-

7^ THE TIME MACHINE.

placency. * No,' said I stoutly to
myself, * that was not the lawn.'

'* But it ivas the lawn. For the
white leprous face of the sphinx was
toward it. Can you imagine what I
felt as this conviction came home to
me ? But you cannot. The Time
Machine was gone !

" At once, like a lash across the
face, came the possibility of losing
my own age, of being left helpless
in this strange new world. The bare
thought of it was an actual physical
sensation. I could feel it grip me at
the throat and stop my breathing.

CHAPTER VL

trbe /Iftacbine 16 %obU

N another moment I was
in a passion of fear, and
running with great, leap-
ing strides down the slope. Once
I fell headlong and cut my face. I
lost no time in stanching the blood,
but jumped up and ran on, with a
warm trickle down my cheek and
chin. All the time I ran I was say-
ing to myself : ' They have moved it
a little — pushed it under the bushes
out of the way.' Nevertheless, I ran
with all my might. All the time,
with the certainty that sometimes
comes with excessive dread, I knew
that such assurance was folly, knew
instinctively that the machine was
removed out of my reach.

" My breath came with pain. I

79

8o THE TIME MACHINE.

suppose I covered the whole dis-
tance, from the hill crest to the little
lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten min-
utes. And I am not a young man.
I cursed aloud as I ran at my confi-
dent folly in leaving the machine,
wasting good breath thereby. I
cried aloud, and none answered.
Not a creature seemed to be stirring
in that moonlit world.

" When I reached the lawn my
worst fears were realized. Not a
trace of the thing was to be seen.
I felt faint and cold when I faced
the empty space among the black
tangle of bushes. I ran round it
furiously, as if the thing might be
hidden in a corner, and then stopped
abruptly with my hands clutching
my hair. Above me towered the
sphinx upon the bronze pedestal,
white, shining, leprous in the light
of the rising moon. It seemed to
smile in mockery of my dismay.

" I might have consoled myself by
imagining the little people had put

THE MACHINE IS LOST. 8 1

the mechanism in some shelter for
me, had not I felt assured of their
physical and intellectual inadequacy.
That is what dismayed me : the sense
of some hitherto unsuspected power
through whose intervention my in-
vention had vanished. Yet of one
thing I felt assured : unless some
other age had produced its exact
duplicate, the machine could not
have moved in Time. The attach-
ment of the levers — I will show you
the method later — prevented anyone
from tampering with it in that way
when they were removed. It had been
moved, and was hid, only in Space.
But, then, where could it be ?

" I think I must have had a kind
of frenzy. I remember running vio-
lently in and out among the moonlit
bushes all round the sphinx, and
startling some white animal that in
the dim light I took for a small deer.
I remember, too, late that night, beat-
ing the bushes with my clenched
fists until my knuckles were gashed

82 THE TIME MACHINE.

and bleeding from the broken
twigs.

'^ Then, sobbing and raving in my
anguish of mind, I went down to the
great building of stone. The big
hall was dark, silent, and deserted.
I slipped on the uneven floor and fell
over one of the malachite tables,
almost breaking my shin. I lit a
match and went on past the dusty
curtains of which I have told you.

" There I found a second great hall
covered with cushions, upon which
perhaps a score or so of the little peo-
ple were sleeping. I have no doubt
they found my second appearance
strange enough, coming suddenly out
of the quiet darkness with inarticulate
noises and the splutter and flare of
a match. For they had forgotten
about matches. * Where is my Time
Machine ? ' I began, bawling like an
angry child, laying hands upon them
and shaking them up together. It
must have been very queer to them.
Some laughed, most of them looked

THE MACHINE IS LOST. 83

sorely frightened. When I saw them
standing round me, it came into my
head that I was doing as foolish a
thing as it was possible for me to do
under the circumstances, in trying
to revive the sensation of fear. For
reasoning from the daylight behavior
I thought that fear must be for-
gotten.

" Abruptly I dashed down the
match, and knocking one of the people
over in my course, went blundering
across the big dining hall again out
under the moonlight. I heard cries
of terror and their little feet running
and stumbling this way and that.
I do not remember all I did as the
moon crept up the sky. I suppose it
was the unexpected nature of my
loss that maddened me. I felt hope-
lessly cut off from my own kind,
a strange animal in an unknown
world. I must have raved to and
fro, screaming and crying upon God
and Fate. I have a memory of
horrible fatigue, as the long night of

84 THE TIME MACHINE.

despair wore away, of looking in this
innpossible place and that, of grop-
ing among moonlit ruins and touch-
ing strange creatures in the black
shadows ; at last, of lying on the
ground near the sphinx and weeping
with absolute wretchedness, even
anger at the folly of leaving the
machine having leaked away with
my strength. I had nothing left but
misery.

** Then I slept, and when I woke
again it was full day, and a couple
of sparrows were hopping around
me upon the turf within reach of
my arm.

" I sat up in the freshness of the
morning trying to remember how
I had got there, and why I had such
a profound sense of desertion and
despair. Then things came clear in
my mind. With the plain, reasonable
daylight I could look my circum-
stances fairly in the face. I saw the
wild folly of my frenzy overnight,
and I could reason with myself.

THE MACHINE IS LOST. 8S

*^ * Suppose the worst,' said I, 'sup-
pose the machine altogether lost —
perhaps destroyed. It behooves me
to be calm and patient, to learn the
way of the people, to get a clear idea
of the method of my loss and the
means of getting materials and tools ;
so that in the end, perhaps, I may
make another. That would be my
only hope, a poor hope, perhaps, but
better than despair. And, after all,
it was a beautiful and curious world.

" * But probably the machine had
only been taken away. Still, I must
be calm and patient, find its hiding
place, and recover it by force or
cunning.' And with that I scrambled
to my feet and looked about me,
wondering where I could bathe. I
felt weary, stiff, and travel-soiled.
The freshness of the morning made
me desire an equal freshness. I had
exhausted my emotion. Indeed, as
I went about my business, I found
myself wondering at my intense ex-
citement overnight.

86 THE TIME MACHINE.

" That morning I made a careful
examination of the ground about the
little lawn. I wasted some time in
futile questionings conveyed as well
as I was able to such of the little
people as came by. They all failed
to understand my gestures — some
were simply stolid ; some thought it
was a jest, and laughed at me. I
had the hardest task in the world to
keep my hands off their pretty, laugh-
ing faces. It was a foolish impulse,
but the devil begotten of fear and
blind anger was ill curbed, and still
eager to take advantage of my per-
plexity. The turf gave better coun-
sel. I found a groove ripped in it,
about midway between the pedestal
of the sphinx and the marks of my
feet where, on arrival, I had struggled
with the overturned machine. There
were other signs of the removal of
a heavy body about, of queer, narrow
footprints like those I could imagine
made by a sloth. This directed my
closer attention to the pedestal. It

THE MACHINE IS LOST. 87

was, as I think I have said, of bronze.
It was not a mere block, but highly-
decorated with deep-framed panels
on either side. I went and rapped
at these. The pedestal was hollow.
Examining the panels with care, I
found them discontinuous with the
frames. There were no handles nor
keyholes, but possibly the panels, if
they were doors, as I supposed, opened
from within. One thing was clear
enough to my mind. It took no very-
great mental effort to infer that my
Time Machine was inside that ped-
estal. But how it got there was a
different problem.

" I saw the heads of two orange-clad
people coming through the bushes
and under some blossom-covered
apple trees toward me. I turned,
smiling, to them, and beckoned them
to me. They came, and then, point-
ing to the bronze pedestal, I tried to
intimate my wish to open it. But at
my first gesture toward this, they be-
haved very oddly. I don't know how

88 THE TIME MACHINE.

to convey their expression to you.
Suppose you were to use a grossly
improper gesture to a delicate-minded
woman — it is how she would look.
They went off as if they had received
the last possible insult.

*' However, I wanted access to the
Time Machine ; so I tried a sweet-
looking little chap in white next, with
exactly the same result. Somehow,
his manner made me ashamed of
myself. But, as I say, I wanted the
Time Machine. I tried one more.
As he turned off like the others, my
temper got the better of me. In
three strides I was after him, had him
by the loose part of his robe round
the neck, and began dragging him
toward the sphinx. Then I saw the
horror and repugnance of his face,
and all of a sudden I let him go.

** But I was not beaten yet. I
banged with my fist at the bronze
panels. I thought I heard something
stir inside — to be explicit, I thought
I heard a sound like a chuckle — but

THE MACHINE IS LOST. 89

I must have been mistaken. Then I
got a big pebble from the river, and
came and hammered till I had flat-
tened a coil in the decorations, and
the verdegris came off in powdery
flakes. The delicate little people
must have heard me hammering in
gusty outbreaks a mile away on either
hand, but nothing came of it. I saw
a crowd of them upon the slopes,
looking furtively at me. At last, hot
and tired, I sat down to watch the
place. But I was too restless to
watch long, and, besides, I am too
Occidental for a long vigil. I could
work at a problem for years, but to
wait inactive for twenty-four hours —
that is another matter.

** I got up after a time, and began
walking aimlessly through the bushes
toward the hill again.

" * Patience,' said I to myself. * If
you want your machine again, you
must leave that sphinx alone. If
they mean to take your machine
away, it's little good your wrecking

90 THE TIME MACHINE.

their bronze panels, and if they don't,
you will get it back so soon as you
can ask for it. To sit among all
those unknown things before a puzzle
like that is hopeless. That way lies
monomania. Face this world. Learn
its ways ; watch it ; be careful of too
hasty guesses at its meaning. In the
end you will find clews to it all.'

" Then suddenly the humor of the
situation came into my mind : the
thought of the years I had spent in
study and toil to get into the future
age, and now my passion of anxiety
to get out of it. I had made myself
the most complicated and the most
hopeless trap that ever a man devised.
Although it was at my own expense,
I could not help myself. I laughed
aloud.

*' Going through the big palace it
seemed to me that the little people
avoided me. It may have been
my fancy, or it may have had
something to do with my hammering
at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt

THE MACHINE IS LOST. 9 1

tolerably sure of the avoidance. I
was careful, however, to show no
concern, and to abstain from any
pursuit of them, and in the course of
a day or two things got back to the
old footing.

CHAPTER VII.

tTbe Strange BnimaL

MADE what progress I
could in the language, and
in addition I pushed my ex-
plorations here and there. Eitiier I
missed some subtle point or their
language was excessively simple, al-
most exclusively composed of con-
crete substantives and verbs. There
seemed to be few, if any, abstract
terms, or little use of figurative lan-
guage. Their sentences were usually
simple and of two words, and I failed
to convey or understand any but the
simplest propositions. I determined
to put the thought of my Time Ma-
chine, and the mystery of the bronze
doors under the sphinx, as much as
possible in a corner of my memory
until my growing knowledge would
92

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. 93

lead me back to them in a natural
way. Yet a certain feeling you may
understand tethered me in a circle of
a few miles round the point of my
arrival.

" So far as I could see, all the world
displayed the same exuberant rich-
ness as the Thames valley. From
every hill I climbed I saw the same
abundance of splendid buildings,
endlessly varied in material and style,
the same clustering thickets of ever-
greens, the same blossom-laden trees
and tree ferns. Here and there
water shone like silver, and beyond,
the land rose into blue undulating
hills and so faded into the serenity of
the sky.

" A peculiar feature that presently
attracted my attention was certain
circular wells that appeared to sink
to a profound depth. One layby the
path up the hill which I had fol-
lowed during my first walk. These
wells were rimmed with bronze, curi-
ously wrought, and often protected

94 THE TIME MACHINE.

by small cupolas from the rain. Sit-
ting by the side of these, and peering
down, I failed to see any gleam
of water, and could catch no reflec-
tion from a lighted match. I
heard a peculiar dull sound ; thud,
thud, thud, like the beating of some
big engine, and I discovered from the
flaring of the match that a steady
current of air set down the shaft.

" Moreover, I carelessly threw a
scrap of paper into the throat of the
well, and instead of fluttering slowly
down, it was at once sucked swiftly
out of sight. After a time, too, I
came to connect with these wells cer-
tain tall towers that stood here and
there upon the hill slopes. Above
tliese there was often apparent a pe-
culiar flicker of the air, much as one
sees it on a hot day above a sun-
scorched beach.

"Putting these things together there
certainly seemed to me a strong sug-
gestion of an extensive system of
subterraneous ventilation, though its

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. 95

true import was difficult to im-
agine. I was at first inclined to asso-
ciate it with the sanitary apparatus
of these people. It was the obvious
suggestion of these things, but it was
absolutely wrong.

" And here I must admit that I
learned very little of drains, and
bells, and modes of conveyance and
the like conveniences during my time
in this real future. In some of the
fictitious visions of Utopias and
coming times I have read, there is a
vast amount of detail about building
construction and social arrange-
ments and so forth. But while such
details are easy enough to obtain
when the whole world lies in one's
imagination, they are altogether in-
accessible to a real traveler amid
such realities as surrounded me.
Conceive what tale of London a
negro from Central Africa would
take back to his tribe. What would
he know of railway companies, of
social movements, of telephone and

9^ THE TIME MACHINE.

telegraph wires, of the parcels deliv-
ery company, and postal orders ?
And yet we at least would be willing
enough to explain these things. And
even of what he knew, how much
could he make his untraveled friend
believe ? Then think how little is
the gap between a negro and a man
of our times, and how wide the inter-
val between myself and the Golden
Age people. I was sensible of much
that was unseen, and which con-
tributed to my comfort, but save for
a general impression of automatic
organization, I fear I can convey very
little of the difference to your minds.
" In the matter of sepulcher, for
instance, I could see no traces of
crematoria or anything suggestive of
tombs. But it occurred to me that
possibly cemeteries or crematoria
existed at some spot beyond the
range of my explorations. This
again was a question I deliberately
put to myself, and upon which my
curiosity was at first entirely de-

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. 97

feated. Neither were there any old
or infirm among them.

" I must confess that my satis-
faction with my first theories at an
automatic civilization and a decadent
humanity did not endure. Yet I
could think of none other. Let me
put my difficulties. The several big
palaces I had explored were mere
living places, great dining halls and
sleeping apartments. I could find
no machinery, no appliances of any
kind. Yet these people were clothed
in pleasant fabrics that must at times
need renewal, their sandals though
without ornament were fairly com-
plex specimens of metal work.
Somehow such things must be made.
And the little people displayed no
vestige of the creative tendencies of
our time. There were no shops, no
workshops, no indications of impor-
tations from any other part of the
earth. They spent all their time irh ^k ^^
playing gently, in bathing in the ]
river, in making love in a half playt

98 THE TIME MACHINE.

ful fashioHj in eating fruit, and sleep-
ing. I could not see how things
were kept going.

"Then again about the Time
Machine. Something, I knew not
what, had taken it into the hollow
pedestal of the sphinx. Why ? For
the life of me I could not imagine.

"ijThen there were those wells with-
out water, those flickering pillars. I
felt I missed a clew somewhere. I
felt — how shall I say it ? Suppose
you found an inscription with sen-
tences here and there in excellent
plain English, and interpolated
therewith others made up of words,
even of letters, absolutely unknown
to you. That was how the world of
802,701 presented itself to me on the
third day of my stay.

*' On that day, too, I made a friend
— of a sort. It happened that as I
was watching some of the little people
bathing in a shallow of the river,
one of them was seized with cramp
and began drifting down the stream.

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. 99

The main current of the stream ran
rather swiftly there, but not too
swiftly for even a moderate swimmer.
It will give you an idea, therefore, of
the strange want of ideas of these peO"
pie, wTie"ri~TTelT"you fhal none made/
the slightest attempt to rescue the
weakly, crying little creature who
was drowning before their eyes.

" When I realized this I hurriedly
slipped off my garments, and wading
in from a point lower down, caught
the poor little soul and brought her
to land.

** A little rubbing of the limbs soon
brought her round, and I had the
satisfaction of seeing that she was all
right before I left her. I had got to
such a low estimate of these little
folks that I did not expect gratitude.
In that, however, I was wrong.

" The incident happened in the
morning. In the afternoon I met
my little woman, as I believe it was,
when I was returning toward my
center from one of my explorations,

lOO THE TIME MACHINE.

and she received me with cries of
delight and presented me with a big
garland of flowers — evidently pre-
pared for me.

" The action took my imagination.
Very possibly I had been feeling
desolate. At any rate I did my best
to display my appreciation of the
gift.

" We were soon seated together in
a little stone arbor, engaged in a
conversation that was chiefly smiles.

" The little creature's friendliness
affected me exactly as a child's
might. We passed each other
flowers and she kissed my hands. I
did the same to hers. Then I tried
conversation and found out her name
was Weena, which, though I don't
know what it meant, somehow
seemed appropriate enough. That
was the beginning of a queer friend-
ship that lasted altogether a week
and ended — as I will tell you.

" She was exactly like a child. She
wanted to be with me always. She

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. lOI

tried to follow me everywhere, and it
went to my heart to tire her out upon
my -next exploration and leave her
behind at last exhausted, and calling
after me rather plaintively. But the
problems of the world had to be
mastered. I had not, I said to my-
self, come into the future to carry on
a miniature flirtation. Yet her dis-
tress when I left her was very great,
her expostulations at the parting
sometimes frantic, and I think alto-
gether I had as much trouble as
comfort from her affection. And
yet she was, somehow, a very great
comfort.

"I thought it was mere childish
affection that made her cling to me.
Until it was too late, I did not
clearly know what I had inflicted
upon her when I left her. Nor, until
it was too late, did I clearly under-
stand what she was to me. For the
little doll of a creature, by merely
seeming fond of me and showing in
her weak futile way that she cared

102 THE TIME MACHINE.

for me, presently gave ray return to
the neighborhood of the white
sphinx, almost the feeling of coming
home. I would watch for her little
figure of white and gold so soon as I
came over the hill.

" It was from her, too, that I learned
that fear had not altogether left the
world. She was fearless enough in
the daylight, and she had the oddest
confidence in me — for once in a fool-
ish moment I made threatening
grimaces at her, and she simply
laughed at them. But she dreaded
the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded
black things. Darkness to her was
the one fearful thing. It was a
singularly passionate dread, and it
set me thinking and observing. I
discovered then, among other things,
that these little people gathered into
the great houses after dark, and slept
a number together. To enter upon
them without a light was to put them
into a tumult of apprehension. I
never found one out of doors or one

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. IO3

sleeping alone within doors after
dark.

" Yet I was still such a blockhead
that I missed the lesson of that fear,
and in spite of Weena's evident dis-
tress insisted upon sleeping away
from these slumbering heaps of
humanity. It troubled her greatly,
but usually her odd affection for me
triumphed, and for five of the nights
of our acquaintance, including the last
night of all, she slept with her head
pillowed beside mine. But my story
slips away from me as I speak of her.

'^ It must have been on the night be-
fore I rescued Weena that I woke up
about dawn. I had been restless,
dreaming most disagreeably that I
was drowned and that sea anemones
were feeling over my face with their
soft palps. I awoke with a start, and
with an odd fancy that some grayish
animal had just rushed out of the
chamber in which I slept.

I tried to get to sleep again, but I
felt restless and uncomfortable. It

104 THE TIME MACHINE.

was that dim gray hour when things
are just creeping out of the darkness,
when everything is colorless and
clear cut and yet unreal. I got up
and went down into the great hall
and out upon the flagstones in front
of the palace. I thought I would
make a virtue of necessity and see
the sunrise.

"The moon was setting, and the
dying moonlight and first pallor of
dawn mingled together in a ghastly
half-light. The bushes were inky
black, the ground a somber gray, the
sky colorless and cheerless. And up
the hill slope I thought I saw ghosts.
Three several times as I scanned the
slope I saw white figures. Twice I
fancied I saw a solitary white ape-
like creature running rather quickly
up the hill, and once near the ruins I
saw a group of two carrying some
dark body. They moved hastily. I
did not see what became of them.
It seemed that they vanished among
the bushes.

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. I05

" The dawn was still indistinct, you
must understand. I was feeling that
chill, uncertain, early morning feel-
ing you may have experienced. I
doubted my eyes. As the eastern
sky grew brighter, and the light of
the day increased, and vivid coloring
came back to the world once more, I
scanned the view keenly, but I saw
no confirmation of my white figures.
They were mere creatures of the half
light.

" * They must have been ghosts,"
said I ; "I wonder whence they
dated.'

" For a queer notion of Grant
Allen's came into my head and
amused me. If each generation dies
and leaves ghosts, he argues, the
world at last will get overcrowded
with them. On that theory they
would have become very thick in
eight hundred thousand years from
now, and it was no great wonder to
see four all at once. But the jest
was unsatisfactory, and I was think-

I06 THE TIME MACHINE.

ing of these figures all the morning
until the rescue of Weena drove the
subject out of my head. I associated
them in some indefinite way with the
white animal I had startled in my
first^ passionate search for the Time
Machine. But Weena was a pleasant
substitute for such a topic.

** These ghostly shapes were soon
destined to take possession of my
mind in a far more vivid fashion. I
think I have said how much hotter
than our own was the weather of this
future age. I cannot account for it.
It may be the sun was hotter, or else
the earth was nearer the sun. It is
usual to assume that the sun will go
on cooling steadily in the future, but
people unfamiliar with such specula-
tions as those of the younger Darwin,
forget that the planets must ulti-
mately, one by one, fall back into the
parent body. As these catastrophies
occur the sun will blaze out again
with renewed energy. It may be
that some inner planet had suffered

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. I07

this fate. Whatever the reason, the
fact remains that the sun was very
much hotter than it is now.

" It was one very hot morning, my
fourth morning, I think, as I was
seeking a refuge from the heat and
glare in a colossal ruin near the great
house where I sheltered, that this
remarkable incident occurred. Clam-
bering among these heaps of masonry,
I found a long narrow gallery, the end
and side windows of which were
blocked by fallen masses of masonry
and which by contrast with the bril-
liance outside seemed at first impene-
trably dark to me.

" I entered it groping, for the change
from light to blackness made spots of
color swim before me. Suddenly I
halted spell-bound. A pair of eyes,
luminous by reflection against the
daylight without, was watching me
out of the obscurity !

" The old instinctive dread of wild
animals came upon me. I clenched
my hands and steadfastly looked into

Io8 THE TIME MACHINE.

the glaring eyeballs. I feared to
turn. Then the thought of the ab-
solute security in which humanity
appeared to be living came to my
mind. Then I remembered that
strange dread of the dark.

** Overcoming my fear to some
extent, I advanced a step, and
spoke. I will admit that my voice
was hoarse and ill controlled. I put
out my hand, and touched some-
thing soft.

" At once the eyes darted sideways,
and something white ran past me. I
turned, with my heart in my mouth,
and saw a queer little ape-like figure,
with the head held down in a pecu-
liar manner, running across the sun-
lit space behind me. It blundered
against a block of granite, staggered
aside, and in a moment was hidden
in a black shadow beneath another
pile of ruined masonry.

" My impression of it was of course
very imperfect. It was of a dull
white color, and had strange, large.

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. lO^

grayish-red eyes. There was some
flaxen hair on its head and down its
back. But, as I say, it went too
fast for me to see distinctly. I can-
not even say whether it ran on all
fours, or only with its fore arms held
very low.

" After a momentary hesitation I
followed the creature into the second
heap of ruins. I could not find it
there at first, but after a time, in the
profound obscurity I came upon one
of those round, well-like openings,
of which I have told you, half closed
by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought
came to me. Could the thing have
vanished down the shaft ? I lit a
match, and, looking down, saw a
small white moving figure, with large
bright eyes, that regarded me stead-
fastly as it retreated.

" The thing made me shudder. It
was so like a human spider. It was
clambering down the wall of the
shaft, and now I noticed for the first
time a number of metal projections

110 THE TIME MACHINE.

for foot and hand, forming a kind of
ladder down.

** Suddenly the light burned my
fingers and fell out of my hand,
going out as it dropped ; and when
I had lit another, the little monster
had disappeared.

" I do not know how long I sat
peering down the portentous well.
Very slowly could I persuade myself
that the thing I had seen was a man.
But gradually the real truth dawned
upon me ; that man had not remained
one species, but had differentiated
into two distinct animals ; that my
graceful children of the upperworld
were not the only descendants of the
men of my generation, but that this
bleached, nocturnal thing that had
flashed before me, was also heir to
our age.

" I thought of the flickering pillars,
and of my theory of an underground
ventilation. I began to suspect their
true import.

" But what was this creature doing

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. m

in my scheme of a perfectly balanced
organization ? How was it related
to the indolent serenity of the beau-
tiful overworld people ? And what
was hidden down below there ? I
sat upon the edge of the well, telling
myself I had nothing to fear in de-
scending, and that there I must go
for the solution of my difficulties,
and withal I was absolutely afraid to
go down.

"As I hesitated, two of the beautiful
upperworld people came running in
their amorous sport, across the day-
light into the shadow. One pursued
the other, flinging flowers at her as
he ran. They seemed disappointed
when they found me with my arm
against the overturned pillar, peering
down the well. Apparently, it was
considered bad form to notice these
apertures, for when I pointed to it,
and tried to frame a question about
it in their tongue, they seemed dis-
tressed, and turned away. They
were, however, interested by my

112 THE TIME MACHINE,

matches, and I struck several to
amuse them.

'' However, all my attempts to woo
them toward the subject I wanted
failed ; and presently I left them.
I resolved to go back to Weena, and
see what I could get from her.

*' But my mind was already in revo-
lution, my guesses and impressions
slipping and sliding to a new adjust-
ment. I had now the clew to these
wells, to the ventilating towers, to
the problem of the ghosts, and a
hint, indeed, of the meaning of the
bronze gates and the fate of the Time
Machine. Vaguely indeed, there
came a suggestion toward the eco-
nomic problem that had puzzled me.
" Here was the new view : Evi-
: dently this second species of man
was subterranean. There were three
I circumstances m particular that
I made me think its rare emergence
upon the surface was the outcome
of long subterraneous habit. In the
first place, the bleached appearance,

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. 113

common in most animals that live
largely in the dark — the white fish
of the Kentucky caves, for instance.
Then the large eyes and their ca-
pacity for reflecting the light — a
common feature of nocturnal eyes,
witness the owl and the cat. And
finally the evident confusion in the
sunlight, the hasty flight toward dark
shadow, and the carriage of the head
while in the light, re-enforced the
idea of an extremely sensitive retina.

" Beneath my feet, then, the earth
must be tunneled out to an enor-
mous extent, and in these caverns
the new race lived. The presence of
ventilating shafts and wells all along
the hill slopes — everywhere, in fact,
except along the river valley — showed
how universally the ramifications of
the underworld extended.

"And it was natural to assume that
it was in the underworld that the
necessary work of the overv/orld was
performed. This was so plausible
that I accepted it unhesitatingly.

114 THE TIME MACHINE.

From that I went on to assume how
the splitting of the human species
came about. I dare say you will an-
ticipate what shape my theory took,
though I soon felt it was still short
of the truth of the case.

*' But at first, starting from the
problems of our own age, it seemed
as clear as daylight to me that the
gradual widening of the present
merely temporary and social differ-
ence of the capitalist from the
laborer was the key to the explana-
tion. No doubt it will seem gro-
tesque enough to you and wildly in-
credible, and yet even now there are
circumstances that point in the way
things have gone. There is a ten-
dency plainly enough to utilize
underground space for the less orna-
mental purposes of civilization ;
there is the Metropolitan Railway in
London, for instance, and all these
new electric railways ; there are sub-
ways, and underground workrooms,
restaurants, and so forth. Evidently,

THE STRANG]^ ANIMAL. 11$

L .thought, this' tendency had in-
creased until industry had gradually
lost sight of the day, going into
larger and larger underground fac-
tories, in which the workers would
spend an increasing amount of their
time. Even now, an East End
worker lives in such artificial condi-
tions as practically to be cut off from
the natural surface of the earth and
the clear sky altogether.

" Then again, the exclusive ten-
dency of richer people, due, no\
doubt, to the increasing refinement *
of their education and the widening
gulf between them and the rude vio-
lence of the poor, is already leading
to the closing of considerable por-
tions of the surface of the country
against these latter. About London,
for instance, perhaps half the prettier
country is shut up from such intru-
sion. And the same widening gulf,
due to the length and expense of the
higher educational process and the
increased facilities for, and tempta-

Il6 THE TIME MACHINE.

tion toward, forming refined habits
among the rich, will make that fre-
quent exchange between class and
iclass, that promotion and inter-
! marriage which at present retards the
splitting of our species along the
lines of social stratification, less and
less frequent.

'* So, in the end, you would have
above ground the Haves, pursuing
health, comfort, and beauty, and
below ground the Have-nots ; the
workers, getting continually adapted
to their labor. No doubt, once they
were below ground, considerable
rents would be charged for the ven-
tilation of their caverns. Workers
Y who struck work would starve or be
suffocated for arrears of ventilator
rent ; workers who were so consti-
tuted as to be miserable and rebel-
lious would die. In the end, if the
balance was held permanent, the
survivors would become as well
adapted to the conditions of their
subterranean life as the overworld

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. H?

people were to theirs, and as happy
in their way. It seemed to me that
the refined beauty of the overworld,
and the etiolated pallor of the lower,
followed naturally enough.

" The great triumph of humanity I
had dreamed of now took a different
shape in my mind. It had been no
triumph of universal education and
general co-operation, such as I had
imagined at the first. Instead, I saw
a real aristocracy, armed with a per-
fected science and working out to a
logical conclusion the industrial sys- ;\
tem of to-day. The triumph of the\ \ ^
overworld humanity had not been ; \
simply a triumph over nature, but a . /
triumph over nature and their fellow- ,
men.

" I must warn you this was my
theory at the time. I had no con-
venient Cicerone on the pattern of
the Utopian books. My explanation , ^
may be absolutely wrong. I still
think it the most plausible one. Bu
even on this supposition the balanc

Il8 THE TIME MACHINE.

civilization that was at last attained
must have long since passed its
zenith, and was now far gone in de-
cay. The too perfect security of
the overworld had led these to a
slow movement of degeneration at
last — to a general dwindling of size,
strength, and intelligence. That I
already saw clearly enough, but what
had happened to the lower world I
did not yet suspect. Yet from what
I had seen of the Morlocks, — that, by
the bye, was the name by which these
creatures were called, — I could im-
agine the modification of the human
type was far more profound in the
underworld than among the Eloij the
beautiful races that I already knew.
" Then came some troublesome
doubts. Why had the Morlocks
taken my Time . Machine ? For I
" felt sure these underpeople had taken
it. Why, too, if the Eloi 'were
masters, could they not restore the
^<-hing to me ? And why were the
subi.i so afraid of the dark ?

THE STRANGE ANIMAL. Hg

"I determined, as I have said, to
question Weena about this under-
world, but here again I was disap-
pointed. At first she would not
understand my questions, and then
she refused to answer. She shivered
as though the topic was unendurable.
And when I pressed her, perhaps a
little harshly, she burst into tears.

" They were the only tears I ever
saw in that future age, except my
own. When I saw them I ceased
abruptly to trouble about the Mor-
locks, and was only concerned_in
driving these signs of her human in-
heritance out of her eyes again. And
presently she was smiling and clap-
ping her hands while I solemnly burnt
a match.

j t ^-'t^V^^

/

H-U

.'J.

CHAPTER VIII.

Zbc /I!borlocft0»

T may seem odd to you, but
it was two days before I
could follow up the clew of
these Morlocks in what was mani-
festly the proper way, and descend
into the well. I felt a peculiar shrink-
ing from their pallid bodies. They
were just the half-bleached color of
the worms and things one sees pre-
served in spirit in a zoological
museum. And they were cold to the
touch. Probably my shrinking was
largely due to the sympathetic influ-
ence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the
Morlocks I now began to appreciate.
" The next night I did not sleep very
well. Possibly my health was a little
disordered. I was oppressed with
doubt and perplexity. Once or twice

THE MORLOCKS. 121

I had a feeling of intense fear for
which I could perceive no definite
reason. I remember creeping noise-
lessly into the great hall where the
little people were sleeping in the
moonlight — that night it was that
Weena was among them — and feel-
ing reassured by their presence. It
occurred to me even then that when
in the course of a few days the moon
passed through its last quarter and
the nights became dark, the appear-
ance of these unpleasant creatures
from below, these whitened Lemurs,
these new vermin that had replaced
the old, might be more abundant.

"On both these days I had the rest-
less feeling of one who shirks an in-
evitable duty. I felt assured that the
Time Machine was only to be re-
covered by boldly penetrating these
subterranean mysteries. Yet I could
not face it. If I had only had a
companion it would have been dif-
ferent. But I was so horribly alone,
and even to clamber down into

122 THE TIME MACHINE.

the darkness of the well appalled
me.

" I don't know if you will under-
stand my feeling, but I never felt
quite safe at my back.

" It was this restless feeling, per-
haps, that drove me further than I had
hitherto gone in my exploring expedi-
tions. Going to the southwestward
toward the rising country that is now
called Combe Wood, I observed far
off, in the direction of nineteenth
century Banstead, a vast green pile,
of a different character from any I
had hitherto seen. It was larger
than even the largest of the palaces
or ruins I knew, and the fagade ap-
peared to me Oriental in its character.
The face of it had the luster as well
as the pale green tint, a kind of bluish
green, of a certain type of Chinese
porcelain. The difference in appear-
ance in the building suggested a dif-
ference in its use. I was minded to
push on and explore it. But the day
was growing late and I had come

THE MORLOCKS. 123

upon the sight of the place after a
long and tiring circuit. I resolved
to postpone this examination for the
following day, and returned to the
welcome and caresses of little Weena.

"But the next morning I was in a
mood of remorse for my hesitation in
descending the well and facing the
Morlocks in their caverns. I per-
ceived my curiosity regarding this
great pile of Green Porcelain was a
mere self-deception to shirk the ex-
perience I dreaded by another day.
I resolved I would make the descent
without further waste of time, and
started out in the early morning to-
ward a well near the ruins of granite
and aluminum.

" Little Weena ran by my side. She
followed me to the well dancing, but
when she saw me lean over the mouth
and look downward, she seemed
strangely disconcerted.

" ' Good-by, little Weena,* said I,
kissing her, and then putting her
down I began to feel over the parapet

124 THE TIME MACHINE.

for the climbing hooks — rather has-
tily, for I feared my courage might
leak away.

'* At first Weena watched me in
amazement, and then she gave a most
piteous cry, and running to me be-
gan to pull at me with her little
hands. 1 think her opposition nerved
me rather to proceed. I shook her
off, perhaps a little roughly, and in
another moment I was in the throat
of the well.

" I saw her agonized face over the
parapet, and smiled to reassure her.
Then I had to look down at the un-
stable hooks by which I hung.

" I had to clamber down a shaft of
perhaps two hundred yards. The
descent was effected by means of me-
tallic bars projecting from the sides
of the well, and since they were
adapted to the needs of a creature much
smaller and lighter than myself, I
was speedily cramped and fatigued
by the descent. And not simply
fatigued. My weight suddenly bent

THE MORLOCKS, 125

one of the hooks and almost swung
me off it down into the blackness
beneath.

** For a moment I hung by one hand,
and after that experience I did not
dare to rest again, and though my
arms and back were presently acutely
painful, I continued to clamber with
as quick a motion as possible down
the sheer descent. Glancing upward
I saw the aperture, a mere small blue
disk above me, in which a star was
visible, and little Weena's head ap-
peared as a round black projection.
The thudding sound of some machine
below me grew louder and more
oppressive. Everything save that
minute circle above was profoundly
dark. When I looked up again
Weena had disappeared.

" I was in an agony of discomfort.
I had some thought of trying to go
up the shaft again, and leave the
underworld alone. But while I
turned this over in my mind I con-
tinued to descend.

126 THE TIME MACHINE.

" It was with intense relief that I
saw dimly coming up a foot to the
right of me, a slender loophole in the
wall of the shaft, and swinging myself
in, found it was the aperture of a
narrow horizontal tunnel in which I
could lie down and rest.

" It was not too soon. My arms
ached, my back was cramped, and I
was trembling with the prolonged
fear of falHng. Besides this, the un-
broken darkness had had a distress-
ing effect upon my eyes. The air was
full of the throbbing and hum of the
machinery that pumped the air down
the shaft.

" I do not know how long I lay in
that tunnel. I was roused by a soft
hand touching my face. Starting up
in the darkness, I snatched at my
matches and hastily striking one saw
three grotesque, white creatures, simi-
lar to the one I had seen above
ground in the ruin, hastily retreating
before the light. Living as they did

THE MORLOCKS. 127

in what appeared to me impenetrable
darkness, their eyes were abnormally
large and sensitive, just as are the eyes
of the abyssmal fishes or of any purely
nocturnal creatures, and they re-
flected the light in the same way. I
have no doubt they could see me in
that rayless obscurity, and they did
not seem to have any fear of me
apart from the light. But so soon as
I struck a match in order to see them,
they fled incontinently, vanishing up
dark gutters and tunnels from which
their eyes glared at me in the strangest
fashion.

" I tried to call to them, but what
language they had was apparently
a different one from that of the over-
world people. So that I was needs
left to my own unaided exploration.
The thought of flight rather than ex-
ploration was even at that time in
my mind.

You are in for it now,' said I to
myself, and went on.

" Feeling my way along this tunnel

128 THE TIME MACHINE.

of mine, the confused noise of
machinery grew louder, and presently
the walls fell away from me and I
came to a large open space, and strik-
ing another match saw I had en-
tered a vast arched cavern extending
into darkness, at last, beyond the
range of my light.

" The view I had of this cavern was
as much as one could see in the burn-
ing of a match. Necessarily my
memory of it is very vague. Great
shapes like big machines rose out of
the dim and threw grotesque black
shadows, in which the spectral Mor-
locks sheltered from the glare. The
place, by the bye, was very stuffy and
oppressive, and the faint halitus of
freshly shed blood was in the air.
Some way down the central vista
was a little table of white metal upon
which a meal seemed to be spread.
The Morlocks at any rate were car-
nivorous. Even at the time I re-
member thinking what large animal
could have survived to furnish the

THE MORLOCKS. 1 29

red joint I saw. It was all very in-
distinct, the heavy smell, the big un-
meaning shapes, the white figures
lurking in the shadows, and only
waiting for the darkness to come at
me again. Then the match burned
down and stung my fingers and fell,
a wriggling red spot in the black.

" I have thought since how particu-
larly ill equipped I was. When I
had started with the Time Machine I
had started with the absurd assump-
tion that the men of the future would
certainly be infinitely in front of us
in all their appliances. I had come
v/ithout arms, without medicine, with-
out anything to smoke, — at times I
missed tobacco frightfully,— even
without enough matches. If I had
only thought of a kodak ! I could
have flashed that glimpse of the un-
derworld \n a second and examined
it at leisure. But as it was, I stood
there with only the weapons and
powers that Nature had endowed me
with— hands, feet, and teeth— except

130 THE TIME MACHINE.

four safety matches that still re-
mained to me.

" I was afraid to push my way in
among all this machinery in the dark,
and it was only with my last glimpse
of light I discovered that my store of
matches had run low. It had never
occurred to me until that moment
that there was any need to economize
them, and I had wasted almost half
of the box in astonishing the above-
ground people, to whom fire was a
novelty. As I say, I had four left.

" Then while I stood in the dark a
hand touched mine ; then some lank
fingers came feeling over my face.
I was sensible of a dull, unpleasant
odor. I fancy I detected the
breathing of a number of those little
beings about me. I felt the box of
matches in my hand being gently dis-
engaged, and other hands behind me
plucking at my clothing.

" The sense of these unseen crea-
tures examining me was indescribably
unpleasant. The sudden realization

THE MORLOCKS. 13 1

of my ignorance of their ways of think-
ing and possible actions came home
to me very vividly in the darkness.
I shouted at them as loudly as I
could. They started away from me,
and then I could feel them approach-
ing me again. They clutched at me
more boldly, whispering odd sounds
to each other. I shivered violently
and shouted again, rather discord-
antly. This time they were not so
seriously alarmed and made a queer
laughing noise as they came toward
me again.

** I will confess I was horribly
frightened. I determined to strike
another match and escape under its
glare. Eking it out with a scrap of
paper from my pocket, I made good
my retreat to the narrow tunnel.
But hardly had I entered this when
my light was blown out, and I could
hear them in the blackness rustling
like wind among leaves and pattering
like the rain, as they hurried after me.

" In a moment I was clutched by

132 THE TIME MACHINE.

several hands again, and there was
no mistake now that they were trying
to draw me back. I struck another
light and waved it in their dazzled
faces. You can scarcely imagine
how nauseatingly inhuman those pale,
chinless faces and great lidless,
pinkish-gray eyes seemed, as they
stared stupidly, evidently blinded by
the light.

"So I gained time and retreated
again, and when my second match
had ended struck my third. That
had almost burned through as I
reached the opening of the tunnel
upon the well. I lay down on the
edge, for the throbbing whirl of the
air-pumping machine below made me
giddy, and felt sideways for the pro-
jecting hooks. As I did so my feet
were grasped from behind and I was
violently tugged backward. I lit my
last match — and it incontinently
went out. But I had my hand on
the climbing bars now, and kicking
violently disengaged myself from the

THE MORLOCKS. 133

clutches of the Morlocks, and was
speedily clambering up the shaft
again.

'* They remained peering and blink-
ing up the shaft, except one little
wretch who followed me for some
way, and indeed well-nigh captured
my boot as a trophy.

*' That upward climb seemed unend-
ing. While I still had the last twenty
or thirty feet of it above me, a deadly
nausea came upon me. I had the
greatest difficulty in keeping my hold.
The last few yards was a frightful
struggle against this faintness.
Several times my head swam and I
felt all the sensations of falling.

" At last I got over the well mouth
somehow and staggered out of the
ruin into the blinding sunlight. I fell
upon my face. Even the soil seemed
sweet and clean.

"Then I remember Weena kissing
my hands and ears, and the voices of
others of the Eloi. Then probably I
was insensible for a time.

CHAPTER IX.

Wibcn tbe mm Came.

OW, indeed, I seemed to be
in a worse case than before.
Hitherto, except during my
night's anguish at the loss of the
Time Machine, I had felt a sustain-
ing hope of ultimate escape, but my
hope was staggered by these new
discoveries. Hitherto, I had merely
thought myself impeded by the child-
ish simplicity of the little people and
by some unknown forces which I had
only to understand in order to over-
come. But there was an altogether
new element in the sickening quality
of the Morlocks, something inhuman
and malign. Instinctively I loathed
them. Before, I had felt as a man
might feel who had fallen into a pit ;
my concern was with the pit and
134

WHEN THE NIGHT CAME. 1 35

how to get out again. But now I
felt like a beast in a trap, whose
enemy would presently comeo

*' The enemy I dreaded may sur-
prise you. It was the darkness of the
new moon. Weena had put this into
my head by some, at first, incom-
prehensible remarks about the Dark
Nights. It was not now such a very
difficult problem to guess what the
coming Dark Nights might mean.
The moon was on the wane ; each
night there was a longer interval of
darkness. And I now understood,
to some slight degree, at least, the
reason of the fear of the little upper-
world people for the dark. I won-
dered vaguely what foul villany it
might be that the Morlocks did
under the darkness of the new moon.
" Whatever the origin of the exist-
ing conditions, I felt pretty sure now
that my second hypothesis was all
wrong. The upperworld people might
once have been the favored aristoc-
racy of the world, and the Morlocks

/

V

136 THE TIME MACHINE.

their mechanical servants, but that
state of affairs had passed away long
since. The two species that had re-
sulted from the evolution of man were
sliding down toward, or had already
arrived at, an altogether new relation-
ship. The Eloi, like the Carlovingian
kings, had decayed to a mere beauti-
ful futility. They still possessed the
earth on sufferance, since the Mor-
locks, subterranean for innumerable
generations, had come at last to find
the daylit surface unendurable. And
the Morlocks made their garments,
I inferred, and maintained them in
their habitual need, perhaps through
the survival of an old habit of ser-
vice. They did it, as a standing
horse paws with his foot, or as a man
enjoys killing animals in sport — be-
cause ancient and departed necessi-
ties had impressed it on the organism.
But clearly the old order was already
in part reversed. The Nemesis of
the delicate ones was creeping on
apace. Ages ago, thousands of

WHEN THE NIGHT CAME. 137

generations ago, man had thrust his
brother man out of the ease and sun-
light of life. And now that brother
was coming back — changed. Already
the Eloi had begun to learn one old
lesson anew. They were becoming "n
acquainted again with Fear. /

''Then suddenly came into my
head the memory of the meat I had
seen in the underworld. It seemed
odd how this memory floated into my
mind, not stirred up, as it were, by
the current of my meditations, but
coming in almost like a question
from outside. I tried to recall the
form of it. I had a vague sense of
something familiar, but at that time
I could not tell what it was.

" Still, however helpless the little
people might be in the presence of
their mysterious Fear, I was differ-
ently constituted. I came out of
this age of ours^this ripe prime of
the human race, when fear does not
pafaly^e^and mystery has lost its
terrors. I at least would defend

138 THE TIME MACHINE.

myself. Without further delay I de-
termined to make myself arms and
a fastness where I might sleep with
some security. From that refuge as
a base I could face the strange world
with some confidence again, a confi-
dence I had lost now that I realized
to what uncanny creatures I nightly
lay exposed. I felt I could never
sleep again until my bed was secure
from them. I shuddered with horror
to think how they must already have
examined me during my sleep.

**I wandered during the afternoon
along the valley of the Thames, but
found nothing that commended itself
to my mind as a sufficiently inacces-
sible retiring place. All the build-
ings and trees seemed easily practi-
cable to such dexterous climbers as
the Morlocks — to judge by their
wells — must be. Then the tall pin-
nacles of the Palace of Green Porce-
lain, and the polished gleam of its
walls, came back to my memory, and
in the evening, taking Weena like a

WHEN THE NIGHT CAME. 139

child upon my shoulder, I went up
the hills toward the southwest.

" Now the distance I had reckoned
was seven or eight miles, but it must
have been nearer eighteen. I had
first seen the Palace on a moist after-
noon when distances are deceptively
diminished. In addition, the heel of
one of my shoes was loose, and a nail
was working through the sole, — they
were comfortable old shoes I wear
about indoors, — so that I was lame.
It was already long past sunset before
I came in sight of the Palace, stand-
ing out in black silhouette against the
pale yellow of the sky,

" Weena had been hugely delighted
when first I carried her, but after a
time she desired me to let her down
and ran along by the side of me, oc-
casionally darting off on either hand
to pick flowers to stick in my pockets.
My pockets had always puzzled
Weena, but at the last she had con-
cluded they were an eccentric kind
of vases for floral decoration, At

I40 THE TIME MACHINE.

least she utilized them for that pur-
pose.

"And that reminds me ! As I
changed my jacket I found "

( The Time Traveler paused, put his
hand into his pockety and silently placed
two withered flowers^ not unlike^very
large white malloivs, upon the little
table. Then he resumed his narra-
tive. )

" As the hush of evening crept over
the world and we proceeded over the
hill-crest toward Wimbledon, Weena
became tired and wanted to return
to the house of gray stone. But I
pointed out the distant pinnacles of
the Palace of Green Porcelain to her,
and contrived to make her under-
stand that we were seeking a refuge
there from her Fear.

"You know that great pause that
comes upon things before the dusk.
Even the breeze stops in the trees.
There is to me always an air of ex-
pectation about tliat evening stillness.
The sky was clear, remote, and empty,

WHEN- THE NIGHT CAME. I4I

save for a few horizontal bars far
down in the sunset.

" That night the expectation took
the color of my fears. In the dark-
ling calm my senses seemed preter-
naturally sharpened. I fancied I
could even feel the hollowness of the
ground beneath my feet, could indeed
almost see through it, the Morlocks in
their ant-hill going hither and thither
and waiting for the dark. In this
excited state I fancied that they
would take my invasion of their bur-
rows as a declaration of war. And
why had they taken my Time Ma-
chine ?

" So we went on in the quiet, and
the twilight deepened into night.
The clear blue of the distance faded
and one star after another came out.
The ground grew dim and the trees
black. Weena's fears and her fatigue
grew upon her. I took her in my
arms and talked to her and caressed
her. Then as the darkness grew
profounder she put her arms round

142 THE TIME MACHINE.

my neck, and closing her eyes tightly
pressed her face against my shoulder.

" We went down a long slope into
a valley, and there in the dimness I
almost walked into a little river. This
I waded, and went up the opposite
side of the valley, past a number of
sleeping houses, and by a statue that
appeared to me in the indistinct light
to represent a faun, or some such fig-
ure, minus the head. Here, too, were
acacias. So far, I had seen nothing
of the Morlocks, but it was yet early
in the night, and the darker hours
before the old moon rose were still
to come.

" From the brow of the next hill I
saw a thick wood spreading wide and
black before me. At this I hesitated.
I could see no end to it either to the
right or to the left. Feeling tired, —
my feet, in particular, were very sore,
— I carefully lowered Weena from
my shoulder as I halted, and sat
down upon the turf. I could no
longer see the Palace of Green Por-

WHEN THE NIGHT CAME. 143

celain, and I was in doubt of my
direction.

**I looked into the thickness of the
wood, and thought of what it might
hide. Under that dense tangle of
branches one would be out of sight
of the stars. Even were there no
other lurking danger there, — a danger
I did not care to let my imagination
loose upon, — there would still be all
the roots to stumble over, and the
tree boles to strike myself against. I
was very tired, too, after the excite-
ments of the day, and I decided that
I would not face it, but would pass
the night upon the open hill.

" Weena, I was glad to discover,
was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped
her in my jacket, and sat down be-
side her to wait for the moonrise.
The hillside upon which I sat was
quiet and deserted, but from the
black of the wood there came now
and then a stir of living things.

" Above me shone the stars, for
the night was clear. I felt a certain

144 THE TIME MACHINE.

sense of friendly comfort in their
twinkling. All the old constellations
had gone from the sky, however, for
that slow movement that is imper-
ceptible in a dozen human lifetimes,
had long ago rearranged them in un-
familiar groupings. But the Milky
Way, it seemed to me, was still the
same tattered streamer of star dust
as of yore. Southward — as I judged
it — was a very bright red star that
was new to me. It was even more
splendid than our own green Sirius.
Amid all these scintillating points of
light, one planet shone kindly and
steadily like the face of an old
friend.

" Looking at these stars suddenly
dwarfed my own troubles and all the
gravities of terrestrial life. I thought
of their unfathomable distance, and
the slow, inevitable drift of their
movements out of the unknown past
into the unknown future. I thought
of the great precessional cycle that
the pole of the earth describes in the

WHEN THE NIGHT CAME. 145

heavens. Only forty times had that
silent revolution occurred during all
the years I had traversed. And dur-
ing those few revolutions, all the
activity, all the traditions, the care-
fully planned organizations, the na-
tions, languages, literature, aspira-
tions, even the mere memory of man
as I knew man, had been swept out
of existence. Instead were these
frail creatures who had forgotten
their high ancestry, and the white
animals of which I went in fear.
Then I thought of the great fear
there was between these two species,
and for the first time, with a sudden
shiver, came the clear knowledge of
what the meat I had seen might be.
Yet it was too horrible ! I looked at
little Weena sleeping beside me, her
face white and starlike under the
stars, and forthwith dismissed the
thought from my mind.

" Through that long night I kept
my mind off the Morlocks as well as
I could, and whiled away the time by

146 THE TIME MACHINE.

trying to fancy I could find traces of
the old constellations among the new
confusion. The sky kept very clear,
except a hazy cloud or so. No doubt
I dozed at times. Then, as my vigil
wore on, came a faintness in the east-
ward sky like the reflection of some
colorless fire, and the old moon rose
thin and peaked and white. And
close behind and overtaking it and
overflowing it the dawn came, pale
at first and then growing pink and
warm.

" No Morlocks had approached us.
Indeed, I had seen none upon the
hill that night. And in the confi-
dence of renewed day it almost
seemed to me that my fear had been
unreasonable. I stood up, and found
my foot with the loose heel swollen
at the ankle and painful under the
heel. I sat down again, took off my
shoes, and flung them away.

" I awakened Weena, and forthwith
we went down into the wood, now
green and pleasant, instead of black

WHEN THE NIGHT CAME. 147

and forbidding. And there we found
some fruit wherewith to break our
fast. We soon met others of the
dainty ones, laughing and dancing in
the sunh'ght, as though there was no
such thing in nature as the night.

" Then I thought once more of the
meat that I had seen, I felt assured
now of what it was, and, from the
bottom of my heart, I pitied this last
feeble rill from the great flood of
humanity. Clearly, somewhere in
the long ages of human decay, the
food of the Morlocks had run short.
Possibly they had lived on rats and
suchlike vermin. Even now, man is
far less discriminating and exclusive
in his food than he was, far less than
any monkey. His prejudice against
human flesh is no deep-seated in-
stinct. And so these inhuman sons
of men

" I tried to look at the thing in a
scientific spirit. After all, these were
scarcely to be counted human beings ;
less human they were and more re-

148 THE TIME MACHINE.

mote than our cannibal ancestors
of three or four thousand years ago.
And the minds that would have made
this state torment were gone. Why
I should I trouble ? The Eloi were
' mere fatted cattle, which the antlike
Morlocks preserved and preyed upon,
probably saw to the breeding of.
And there was Weena dancing by
my side !

*' Then I tried to preserve myself
from the horror that was coming
upon me by regarding it as a rigor-
ous punishment of human selfish-
ness ; man liad been content to live
in ease and delight upon the labors
of his fellow-men ; had taken Neces-
sity as his watchword and excuse,
and in fullness of time Necessity had
come home to him. I tried even a
Carlyle-like scorn of these wretched
aristocrats in decline.

" But this attitude of mind was im-
possible. However great their intel-
lectual degradation, the Eloi had
kept too much of the human form

WHEN THE NIGHT CAME. 149

not to claim my sympathy, and to
make me perforce a participant in
their degradation and their Fear^ j
"I had at this time very vague
ideas of what course I should pursue.
My first idea was to secure some
safe place of refuge for Weena and
myself, and to make myself such
arms of metal or stone as I could
contrive. That necessity was im-
mediate. In the next place, I hoped
to procure some means of fire, so
that I should have the weapon of a
torch at hand, for nothing, I knew,
would be more efficient against these
Morlocks. Then I wanted to ar-
range some contrivance to break
open the doors of bronze under the
white sphinx. I had in mind a bat-
tering ram. I had a persuasion that
if I could enter these doors and carry
a blaze of light before me, I should
discover the Time Machine and
escape. I could not imagine the
Morlocks were powerful enough to
remove it far. Weena I had re*

I50 THE TIME MACHINE.

solved to bring with me to our own
Time.

" Turning such schemes over in
my mind, I pursued our way toward
the building which my fancy had
chosen as our dwelling-place.

CHAPTER X.

^be ipalace of (Breen porcelain.

HIS Palace of Green Porce-
lain, when we approached
it about noon, was, I found,
deserted and falling into ruin. Only
ragged vestiges of glass remained in
its windows, and great sheets of the
green facing had fallen away in
places from the corroded metallic
framework. It lay very high upon a
turfy down, and, looking northeast-
ward before I entered it, I was sur-
prised to see a large estuary, or an
arm of the sea, where I judged
Wandsworth and Battersea must
once have been. I thought then —
though I never followed the thought
up — of what might have happened,
or might be happening, to the living
things in the sea.

152 THE TIME MACHINE.

*' The material of the Palace
proved, on examination, to be in-
deed porcelain, and above the face
of it I saw an inscription in some
unknown characters. I thought,
rather foolishly, that Weena might
help me to interpret this, but I only
learned that the bare idea of writing
had never entered her head. She
always seemed to me, I fancy, more
human than she was, perhaps be-
cause her affection was so human.

" Within the big valves of the
door — which were open and broken —
we found, instead of the customary
hall, a long gallery lit by many side
windows. Even at the first glance I
was reminded of a museum. The
tiled floor was thick with dust, and a
remarkable array of miscellaneous
objects were shrouded in the same
gray covering. Clearly, the place
had been derelict for a very consid-
erable time.

" Then I perceived, standing strange
and guant in the center of the hall,

PA LA CE OF GREEN FORCE LA IN. 153

what was clearly the lower part of the
skeleton of some huge animal. As I
approached this I recognized by the
oblique feet that it was some extinct
creature after the fashion of the me-
gatherium. The skull and the upper
bones lay beside it in the thick dust,
and in one place where rain water
had dripped through some leak in
the roof, the skeleton had decayed
away. Further along the gallery was
the huge skeleton barrel of a bronio-
saurus. My museum hypothesis was
confirmed. Going toward the side of
the gallery I found what appeared to
be sloping shelves, and clearing away
the thick dust, I found the old famil-
iar glass cases of our own time. But
these must have been air-tight to judge
from the fair preservation of some of
their contents.

" Clearly we stood among the ruins
of some latter day South Kensington.
Here apparently was the Palasonto-
logical Section, and a very splendid
array of fossils it must have been ;

154 THE TIME MACHINE.

though the inevitable process of
decay that had been warded off for a
time, and had, through the extinction
of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-
nine-hundreths of its force, was
nevertheless, with extreme sureness,
if with extreme slowness, at work
again upon all its treasures. Here
and there I found traces of the little
people in the shape of rare fossils
broken to pieces or threaded in
strings upon reeds. And the cases
had in some instances been bodily
removed — by the Morlocks, as I
judged.

" The place was very silent. The
thick dust deadened our footsteps.
Weena, who had been rolling a sea
urchin down the sloping glass of a
case, presently came, as I stared about
me, and very quietly took my hand
and stood beside me.

" At first I was so much surprised
by this ancient monument of an in-
tellectual age that I gave no thought
to the possibilities it presented me.

PA LA CE OF GREEN PORCELA IN. 155

Even my preoccupation about the
Time Machine and the Morlocks
receded a little from my mind. The
curiosity concerning human destiny
that had led to my time traveling
was removed. Now, judging from
the size of the place, this Palace of
Green Porcelain had a great deal
more in it than a gallery of palaeon-
tology ; possibly historical galleries,
it might be even a library. To me,
at least in my present circumstances,
these would be vastly more interesting
than this spectacle of old-time geology
in decay.

" Exploring, I found another short
gallery running transversely to the
first. This appeared to be devoted
to minerals, and the sight of a block
of sulphur set my mind running on
gunpowder. But I could find no
saltpeter ; indeed no nitrates of any
kind. Doubtless they had deli-
quesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur
hung in my mind and set up a train
of thinking. As for the rest of the

156 THE TIME MACHINE.

contents of that place, though on the
whole they were the best preserved
of all I saw — I had little interest. I
am no specialist in mineralogy, and I
soon went on down a very ruinous
aisle running parallel to the first hall
I had entered.

" Apparently this section had been
devoted to Natural History, but here
everything had long since passed out
of recognition. A few shriveled
vestiges of what had once been
stuffed animals, dried-up mummies
in jars that had once held spirit, a
brown dust of departed plants, that
was all. I was sorry for this, because
I should have been glad to trace the
patient readjustments by which the
conquest of animated nature had
been attained.

" From this we come to a gallery of
simply colossal proportions, but singu-
larly ill lit, and with its floor running
downward at a slight angle from the
end at which I entered it. At inter-
vals there hung white globes from

PA LA CE OF GREEN PORCELA IN. 157

the ceiling, — many of them cracked
and smashed, — which suggested that
originally the place had been artifici-
ally lit. Here I was more in my ele-
ment, for I found rising on either
side of me the huge bulks of big ma-
chines, all greatly corroded, and many
broken down, but some still fairly
complete in all their parts. You
know I have a certain weakness for
mechanism, and I was inclined to
linger among these, the more so since
for the most part they had the inter- -^^
est of puzzles, and I could make
only the vaguest guesses of what
they were for. I fancied if I could
solve these puzzles I should find
myself in the possession of powers
that might be of use against the Mor-
locks.

''Suddenly Weena came very close
to my side, so suddenly that she
startled me.

" Had it not been for her I do
not think I should have noticed that
the floor of the gallery sloped at

158 THE TIME MACHINE.

all.* The end I had entered was quite
above ground, and was lit by rare
slit-like windows. As one went down
the length of the place, the ground
came up against these windows, un-
til there was at last a pit like the
' area ' of a London house, before
each, and only a narrow line of day-
light at the top. 1 went slowly along,
puzzling about the machines, and had
been too intent upon them to notice
the gradual diminution of the light,
until Weena's increasing apprehen-
sion attracted my attention.

" Then I saw that the gallery ran
down at last into a thick darkness.
I hesitated about proceeding, and
then as I looked around me, I saw
that the dust was here less abundant
and its surface less even. Further
away toward the dim, it appeared to
be broken by a number of small nar-
row footprints. At that my sense of

* It may be, of course, that the floor did not
slope, but that the museum was built upon
the side of the hill. — Editor.

PALACE OF GREEN PORCELAIN. 159

the immediate presence of the Mor-
locks revived. I felt that I was wast-
ing my time in my academic exami-
nation of this machinery. I called
to mind that it was already far ad-
vanced in the afternoon, and that I
had still no weapon, no refuge, and no
means of making a fire. And then,
down in the remote black of the gal-
lery, I heard a peculiar pattering and
those same odd noises I had heard
down the well.

" I took Weena's hand. Then
struck with a sudden idea, I left her,
and turned to a machine from which
X-)rojected a lever not unlike those in
a signal box. Clambering upon the
stand of the machine and grasping
this lever in my hands, I put all my
weight upon it sideways. Weena^
deserted in the central aisle, began
suddenly to whimper. I had judged
the strength of the lever pretty cor-
rectly, for it snapped after a minute's
strain, and I rejoined Weena with a
mace in my hand more than sufficient,

l6o THE TIME MACHINE.

I judged, for any Morlock skull I
might encounter.

" And I longed very much to kill
a Morlock or so. Very inhuman,
you may think, to want to go killing
one's own descendants, but it was
impossible somehow to feel any
humanity in the things. Only my
disinclination to leave Weena, and a
persuasion that if I began to slake
my thirst for murder my Time Ma-
chine might suffer, restrained me from
going straight down the gallery and
killing the brutes I heard there.

" Mace in one hand and Weena in
the other we went out of that gallery
and into another still larger, which at
the first glance reminded me of a
military chapel hung with tattered
flags. The brown and charred rags
that hung from the sides of it, I
presently recognized as the decaying
vestiges of books. They had long
since dropped to pieces and every
semblance of print had left them.
But here and there were warped and

PA LA CE OF GREEN POR CELA IN. 1 6 1

cracked boards and metallic clasps
that told the tale well enough.

*' Had I been a literary man I might
perhaps have moralized upon the
futility of all ambition, but as it was,
the thought that struck me with
keenest force, was the enormous
waste of labor rather than of hope, to
which this somber gallery of rotting
paper testified. At the time I will
confess, though it seems a petty
trait now, that I thought chiefly of
the Philosophical Transactions, and
my own seventeen papers upon
physical optics.

" Then going up a broad staircase
we came to what may once have been
a gallery of technical chemistry.
And here I had not a little hope of
discovering something to help me.
Except at one end where the roof
had collapsed, this gallery was well
preserved. I went eagerly to every
unbroken case. And at last, in one
of the really air-tight cases, I found a
box of matches. Very eagerly I

1 62 THE TIME MACHINE.

tried them. They were perfectly
good. They were not even damp.

" At that discovery I suddenly
turned to Weena. * Dance ! ' I cried
to her in her own tongue. For now
I had a weapon indeed against the
horrible creatures we feared. And
so in that derelict museum, upon the
thick soft coating of dust, to Weena's
huge delight, I solemnly performed
a sort of composite dance, whistling
' The Land of the Leal ' as cheer-
fully as I could. In part it was a
modest cancan, in part a step dance,
in part a skirt dance, — so far as my
tail coat permitted, — and in part
original. For naturally I am inven-
tive, as you know.

" Now, I still think that for this box
of matches to have escaped the wear
of time for immemorial years was a
strange, and for me, a most fortunate
thing. Yet oddly enough I found
here a far more unlikely substance,
and that was camphor. I found it in
a sealed jar, that, by chance, I sup-

PALACE OF GREEN PORCELAIN. 163

posed had been really hermetically
sealed. I fancied at first the stuff
was paraffin wax^ and smashed
the jar accordingly. But the odor
of camphor was unmistakable. It
struck me as singularly odd, that
among the universal decay, this vola-
tile substance had chanced to survive,
perhaps through many thousand
years. Is reminded me of a sepia
painting I had once seen done from
the ink of a fossil Belemnite that
must have perished and become
fossilized millions of years ago. I
was about to throw this camphor on
one side, and then remembering that
it was inflammable and burnt with a
good bright flame, I put it into my
pocket.

" I found no explosives, however,
or any means of breaking down the
bronze doors. As yet my iron crow-
bar was the most hopeful thing I had
chanced upon. Nevertheless I left
that gallery greatly elated by my dis-
coveries.

l64 THE TIME MACHINE.

*' I cannot tell you the whole story
of my exploration through that long
afternoon. It would require a great
effort of memory to recall it at all in
the proper order, I remember a long
gallery containing the rusting stands
of arms of all ages, and that I hesi-
tated between my crowbar and a
hatchet or a sword. I could not
carry both, however, and my bar of
iron, after all, promised best against
the bronze gates. There were rusty
guns, pistols, and rifles here ; most of
them were masses of rust, but many
of aluminum, and still fairly sound.
But any cartridges or powder there
may have been had rotted into dust.
One corner I saw was charred and
shattered ; perhaps, I thought, by an
explosion among the specimens
there. In another place was a vast
array of idols — Polynesian, Mexican,
Grecian, Phoenician, every country
on earth, I should think. And here,
yielding to an irresistible impulse, I
wrote my name upon the nose of a

PALACE OF GREEN PORCELAIN. 1 65

Steatite monster from South America
that particularly took my fancy.

" As the evening drew on my inter-
est waned. I went through gallery
after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruirt-
ous, the exhibits sometimes mere heaps
of rust and lignite, sometimes fresiier.
In one place I suddenly found my-
self near a model of a tin mine, and
then by the merest accident I dis-
covered in an air-tight case two dyna-
mite cartridges ; I shouted ' Eureka ! '
and smashed the case joyfully. Then
came a doubt. I hesitated, and then
selecting a little side gallery I made
my essay. I never felt such a bitter
disappointment as I did then, wait-
ing five, ten, fifteen minutes for the
explosion that never came. Of
course the things were dummies, as I
might have guessed from their pres-
ence there. I really believe had they
not been so, I should have rushed off
incontinently there and then, and
blown sphinx, bronze doors, and, as
it proved, my chances of finding the

1 66 THE TIME MACHINE.

Time Machine all together into non-
existence.

" It was after that, I think, that we
came to a little open court within
the palace, turfed and with three
fruit trees. There it was we rested
and refreshed ourselves.

" Toward sunset I began to con-
sider our position. Night was now
creeping upon us and my inaccessi-
ble hiding-place was still to be found.
But that troubled me very little now.
I had in my possession a thing that
was perhaps the best of all defenses
against the Morlocks. I had matches
again. I also had the camphor in my
pocket if a blaze were required. It
seemed to me that the best thing we
could do would be to pass the night
in the open again, protected by afire.

" In the morning there was the
Time Machine to obtain. Toward
that as yet I had only my iron mace.
But now with my growing knowledge
I felt very differently toward the
bronze doors than I had done

PALACE OF GREEN PORCELAIN. 167

hitherto. Up to this I had refrained
from forcing them, largely because of
the mystery on the other side. They
had never impressed me as being
very strong, and I hoped to find my
bar of iron not altogether inadequate
for the work.

CHAPTER XI.
•ffn tbe H)arftne06 of the potest

E emerged from the Palace of
Green Porcelain while the
sun was still in part above
the horizon. I was determined to
reach the white sphinx early the
next morning, and I proposed before
the dusk came to push through the
woods that had stopped me on the
previous journey. My plan was to
go as far as possible that night, and
then, building a fire about us, to
sleep under the protection of its
glare. Accordingly as we went along
I gathered any sticks or dried grass I
saw, and presently had my arms full
of such litter. So loaded, our prog-
ress was slower than I had antici-
pated, and besides, VVeena was tired.
I, too, began to suffer from sleepi-

i68

IN THE DA RKNESS OF THE FORES T. 169

ness, and it was fully night before we
reached the wood.

"Now, upon the shrubby hill upon
the edge of this, Weena would have
stopped, fearing the darkness before
us. But a singular sense of impend-
ing calamity, that should indeed have
served me as a warning, drove me
onward. I had been without sleep
for the length of a night and two
days, and I was feverish and irritable.
I felt sleep coming upon me, and
with it the Morlocks.

"While we hesitated I saw among
the bushes up the slope behind us,
and dim against the sky, three
crouching figures. There was scrub
and long grass all about us, and I
did not feel safe from their insidious
approach. The forest, I calculated,
was rather less than a mile in
breadth. If we could get through
it, the hillside beyond was bare, and
to me it seemed an altogether safer
resting-place. I thought that with
my matches and the camphor T could

lyo THE TIME MACHINE.

contrive to keep my path illuminated
through the woods. Yet it was evi-
dent that if I was to flourish matches
with my hands I should have to
abandon my firewood. So rather
reluctantly I put this down.

"Then it came into my head that I
would amaze our friends behind by
lighting it. Ultimately I was to dis-
cover the atrocious folly of this pro-
ceeding, but just then it came to my
mind as an ingenious move for cover-
ing our retreat.

"I don't know if you have ever
thought what a rare thing in the
absence of man and in a temperate
climate, flames must be. The sun's
heat is rarely strong enough to burn
even when focussed by dewdrops, as
is sometimes the case in more tropical
districts. Lightning may blast and
blacken, but it rarely gives rise to
widespread fire. Decaying vegeta-
tion may occasionally smoulder with
the heat of its fermentation, but this
again rarely results in flames. Now,

m THE DA RKNESS OF THE FORES T. 1 7 1

in this decadent age the art of fire-
making had been altogether forgotten
on the earth. The red tongues that
went licking up my heap of wood
were an altogether new and strange
thing to Weena.

"She wanted to run to it and play
with it. I believe she would have
cast herself into it had I not re-
strained her. But I caught her up
and in spite of her struggles plunged
boldly before me into the wood.
For a little way the glare of my fire
lit the path. Looking back presently
I could see, through the crowded tree
stems, that from my heap of sticks
the blaze had spread to some bushes
adjacent, and a curved line of fire
was creeping up the grass of the hill.
I laughed at that.

"Then I turned toward the dark
trees before me again. It was very
black and Weena clung to me con-
vulsively, but there was still, as my
eyes grew accustomed to the darkness,
sufficient light for me to avoid blun-

172 THE TIME MACHINE.

dering against the stems. Overhead
it was simply black, except when
here and there a gap of remote blue
sky shone down upon me. I lit
none of my matches because I had
no hand free. Upon my left arm I
carried my little one, in my right hand
I had the iron bar I had wrenched
from the machine.

"For some way I heard nothing
but the crackling twigs under my feet,
the faint rustle of the breeze above,
and my breathing and the throb of
the blood vessels in my ears. Then I
seemed to hear a pattering about me.

' * I pushed on grimly. The patter-
ing became more distinct, and then
I heard the same queer sounds and
voices I had heard before in the
underworld. There were evidently
several of the Morlocks, and they
were closing in upon me.

** In another minute I felt a tug at
my coat, then something at my arm.
Weena shivered violently and became
quite still.

^«^

IN THE DA RKNESS OF THE FORES T. 173

"It was time for a match. But to
get at that I must put her down. I
did so, and immediately as I fumbled
with my pocket a struggle began in
the darkness about my knees, per-
fectly silent on her part and with the
same peculiar cooing sounds on the
part of the Morlocks. Soft little
hands, too, were creeping over my coat
and back, touching even my neck.

"The match scratched and fizzed.
I held it flaring, and immediately the
white backs of the Morlocks became
visible as they fled amid the trees.
I hastily took a lump of camphor
from my pocket and prepared to
light it as soon as the match waned.

"Then I looked at Weena. She
was lying clutching my feet and
quite motionless, with her face to the
ground. With a sudden fright I
stooped to her. She seemed scarcely
to breathe. I lit the block of cam-
phor and flung it to the ground, and
as it spit and flared up and drove
back the Morlocks and the shadows,

174 THE TIME MACHINE.

I knelt down and lifted up Weena.
The wood behind seemed full of
the stir and murmur of a great com-
pany of creatures.

"Apparently she had fainted. I
put her carefully upon my shoulder
and rose to push on, and then came
a horrible realization.

"While maneuvering with my
matches and Weena, I had turned
myself about several times, and now
I had not the faintest idea in what
direction my path lay. For all I
knew I might be facing back toward
the Palace of Green Porcelain.

"I found myself in a cold perspira-
tion. I had to think rapidly what to
do. I determined to build a fire and
encamp where we were. I put the
motionless Weena down upon a turfy
bole. Very hastily, as my first lump
of camphor waned, I began collecting
sticks and leaves,

"Here and there out of the dark-
ness round me the eyes of the Mor-
locks shone like carbuncles.

IN THE DA RKNESS OF THE FORES T. 11 S

"Presently the camphor flickered
and went out. I lit a match, and as
I did so saw two white forms that
had been approaching Weena dash
hastily back. One was so blinded
by the light that he came straight
for me, and I felt his bones grind
under the blow of my fist. He gave
a whoop of dismay, staggered a little
way, and fell down.

"I lit another piece of camphor
and went on gathering my bonfire.
Presently I noticed how dry was
some of the foliage above me, for
since I had arrived on the Time
Machine, a matter of a week, no rain
had fallen. So instead of casting
about among the trees for fallen
twigs I began leaping up and drag-
ging down branches. Very soon I
had a choking smoky fire of green
wood and dry sticks, and could save
my other lumps of camphor.

"Then I turned to where Weena lay
beside my iron mace. I tried what
I could to revive her, but she lay like

176 THE TIME MACHINE.

one dead. I could not even satisfy
myself whether or not she breathed.
"Now the smoke of the fire beat
over toward me, and it must have
made me suddenly heavy. More-
over the vapor of camphor was in
the air. My fire would not want
replenishing for an hour or so. I
felt very weary after my exertion and
sat down. The wood, too, was full
of a slumberous murmur that I did
not understand.

"I seemed merely to nod and open
my eyes. Then it was all dark
around me, and the Morlocks had
their hands upon me. Flinging off
their clinging fingers I hastily felt in
my pocket for the match-box, and —
it had gone! Then they gripped
and closed with me again.

"In- a moment I knew what had
happened. I had slept, and my fire
had gone out, and the bitterness of
death came over my soul. The
forest seemed full of the smell of

IN THE DARKNESS OF THE FOREST. 1 77

burning wood. I was caught by the
neck, by the hair, by the arms, and
pulled down. It was indescribably
horrible in the darkness to feel all
these soft creatures heaped upon me.
I felt as if I was in a monstrous
spider's web. I was overpowered.
Down I went.

"I felt some little teeth nipping
at my neck. Abruptly I rolled over,
and as I did so, my hand came against
my iron lever. Somehow this gave
me strength for another effort. I
struggled up, shaking off these human
rats from me, and then holding the
bar short, I thrust where I judged
their faces might be. I could feel
the succulent giving of flesh and bone
under my blows, and for a moment
I was free.

"The strange exultation that so
often seems to accompany fighting
came upon me. I knew that both I
and Weena were lost, but I deter-
mined to make the Morlocks pay for
their meat. I stood with my back to

178 THE TIME MACHINE.

a tree swinging the iron bar before
me. The whole wood was full of the
stir and cries of them.

"A minute passed. Their voices
seemed to rise to a higher pitch of
excitement and their movements be-
came faster. Yet none came within
reach of me. I stood glaring at the
blackness. Then suddenly came
hope.

"What if the Morlocks had no
courage?

"And close on the heels of that
came a strange thing. The darkness
seemed to grow luminous. Very
dimly I began to see the Morlocks
about me, — three, battered at my feet,
— and then I perceived with incred-
ulous surprise that the others were
running, in an incessant stream, as
it seemed to me, from behind me,
and away through the wood in front
of me. And their backs seemed no
longer white, but reddish.

"Then as I stood agape I saw,
across a gap of starlight between

IN THE DA RKNESS OF THE FORES T. 179

the branches, a little red spark go
drifting and vanish. And at that I
understood the smell of burning
wood, the slumberous murmur that
was growing now into a gusty roar-
ing, the red glow, and the flight of
the Morlocks.

"Stepping out from behind my
tree and looking back, I saw through
the back pillars of the nearer trees
the flames of the burning forest.
No' doubt it was my first fire coming
after me. With that I hastily looked
round for Weena, but she was gone.
The hissing and crackling behind me,
the explosive thud as each fresh tree
burst into flame, left little time for
reflection. With my iron bar still in
hand I followed in the path of the
Morlocks.

"It was a close race. Once the
flames crept forward so swiftly on my
right as I ran, that I was outflanked
and had to strike off to the left. But
at last I emerged upon a small open
place, and as I did so, a Morlock

l8o THE TIME MACHINE.

came blundering toward me and
passed me, and went on straight
into the fire.

"And now I was to see the most
weird and horrible scene, I think,
of all that I beheld in that future
age.

"This whole space was as bright as
day with the reflection of the fire.
In the center was a small hillock or
tumulus surmounted by a scorched
hawthorn. Beyond this hill was
another arm of the burning forest
from which yellow tongues were
already writhing, and completely
encircling the space with a fence of
fire. Upon the hillside were per-
haps thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled
by the light and heat of the fire,
which was now very bright and liot,
blundering hither and thither against
each other in their bewilderment.
At first I did not realize their blind-
ness, and struck furiously at them
with my bar in a frenzy of fear as
they approached me, killing one and

IN THE DA RKNESS OF THE FORES T, 1 8 1

crippling several others. But when
I had watched the gestures of one of
them groping under the hawthorn
against the red sky, and heard the
moans to which they all gave vent, I
was assured of their absolute help-
lessness and refrained from striking
any of them again. Yet every now
and then one would come straight
toward me, setting loose a quivering
horror, that made me quick to elude
him. At one time the flames died
down somewhat, and I feared these
foul creatures would presently be
able to see me, and I was even think-
ing of beginning the fight by kill-
ing some of them before this should
happen, but the fire burst out again
brightly and I stayed my hand. I
walked about the hill among them
and avoiding them, looking for some
trace of Weena, but I found nothing.
"At last I sat down upon the sum-
mit of the hillock and watched this
strange incredible company of the
blind, groping to and fro and mak-

1 82 THE TIME MACHINE.

ing uncanny noises to one another,
as the glare of the fire beat upon
them. The coiling uprush of smoke
streamed across the sky, and through
the rare tatters of that red canopy,
remote as though they belonged to
another universe, shone the little
stars. Two or three Morlocks came
blundering into me and I drove them
off, trembling myself as I did so,
with blows of my fists. For the most
of that night I was persuaded it
was a nightmare. I bit myself and
screamed aloud in a passionate de-
sire to awake. I beat on the ground
with my hands, and got up, and sat
down again, and wandered here and
there, and again sat down on the
crest of the hill. Then I would fall
to rubbing my eyes and calling upon
God to let me awake. Thrice I saw
Morlocks put their heads down in a
kind of agony and rush into the
flames. But at last, above the sub-
siding red of the fire, above the
streaming masses of black smoke

IN THE DARKNESS OF THE FOREST. 183

and the whitening and blackening
tree stumps, and the diminishing
number of these dim creatures, came
the white light of the day.

"I searched again over the open
space for some traces of Weena, but
could find none, I had half feared
to discover her mangled remains, but
clearly they had left her poor little
body in the forest. I cannot de-
scribe how it relieved me to think
that it had escaped the awful fate
to which it seemed destined. As I
thought of that I was almost moved
to begin a massacre of the defense-
less abominations about me, but I
contained myself. This hillock, as
I have said, was a kind of island in
the forest. From its summit I could
now make out, through a haze of
smoke, the l^alace of Green Porce-
lain, and from that I could get my
bearings for the white sphinx. And
so leaving the remnant of these
damned souls going hither and thither
and moaning, as the day grew clearer,

1 84 7^ HE TIME MACHINE.

I tied some grass about my feet and
limped on across smoking ashes and
among black stems that still pulsated
internally with fire, toward the hid-
ing place of the Time Machine.

"I walked slowly, for I was almost
exhausted as well as lame, and I felt
the most intense wretchedness on
account of the horrible death of little
Weena, which then seemed an over-
whelming calamity. Yet even now,
as I tell you of it in this old familiar
room, it seems more like the sorrow
of a dream than an actual loss. But
it left me absolutely lonely again that
morning — terribly alone. I began to
think of this house of mine, of this
fireside, of some of you, and with
such thoughts came a longing that
was pain.

"As I walked over the smoking
ashes under the bright morning sky
I made a discovery. In my trouser
pocket were still some loose matches.
The box must have leaked before it
was lost!

CHAPTER Xn.

Zbc tTrap of tbe mhitc Spbinj.

O about eight or nine in the
morning I came to the same
seat of yellow metal from
which I had viewed the world upon
the evening of my arrival. I thought
of my hasty conclusions upon that
evening and could not refrain from
laughing bitterly at my confidence.
Here was the same beautiful scene, the
same abundant foliage, the same splen-
did palaces and magnificent ruins, the
same silver river running between its
fertile banks. The gay robes of the
beautiful people moved hither and
thither among the trees. Some were
bathing in exactly the place where I
had saved Weena, and that suddenly
gave me a keen stab of pain. And
like blots upon the landscape rose
185

1 86 THE TIME MACHINE.

the cupolas above the ways to the
underworld. I understood now what
all the beauty of the overworld
people covered. Very pleasant was
their day, as pleasant as the day of
the cattle in the field. Like the cattle
they knew of no enemies, and pro-
vided against no needs. And their
end was the same.

" I grieved to think how brief the
dream of the human intellect had
been. It had committed suicide. It
had set itself steadfastly toward com-
fort and ease, a balanced society with
/ security and permanence as its watch-
words, it had attained its hopes — to
come to this at last. Once, life and
property must have reached almost

\ absolute safety. The rich had been
assured of his wealth and comfort,

' the toiler assured of his life and work.
No doubt in that perfect world there
had been no unemployed problem,
no social question left unsolved.
And a great quiet had followed.
"It is a law of nature we overlook,

THE TRAP OF THE WHITE SPHINX. 1 87

that intellectual versatility is the
compensation for change, danger,
and trouble. An animal perfectly
in harmony with its environment is
a perfect mechanism. Nature never
appeals to intelligence until habit
and instinct are useless. There is no
intelligence where there is no change
and no need of change. Only those
animals partake of intelligence that
have to meet a huge variety of needs
and dangers.

" So, as I see it, the upperworld man
had drifted toward his feeble pretti-
ness, and the underworld to mere
mechanical industry. But that perfect
state had lacked one thing even of
mechanical perfection — absolute per-
manency. Apparently as time went
on the feeding of the underworld,
however it was effected, had become
disjointed. /Alother Necessity, who
had been staved off for a few thou-
sand years, came back again, and she
began below. The underworld, being
in contact with machinery which,

1 88 THE TIME MACHINE.

however perfect, still needs some little
thought outside of habit, had prob-
ably retained, perforce, rather more
initiative, if less of every other human
character, than the upper. And when
other meat failed them, they turned
to what old habit had hitherto for-
bidden. So I say I saw it in my last
view of the world of 810,701. It may
be as wrong an explanation as mortal
wit could invent. It is how the
thing shaped itself to me, and as
\ that I give it to you.^

*" " After the fatigues, excitements,
and terrors of the past days, and in
spite of my grief, this seat and the
tranquil view and the warm sunlight
were very pleasant. I was very tired
and sleepy, and soon my theorizing
passed into dozing. Catching my-
self at that I took my own hint, and
spreading myself out upon the turf,
I had a long and refreshing sleep.

" I awoke a little before sunset-
ting. I now felt safe against being
caught napping by the Morlocks, and

THE TRAP OP THE WHITE SPHINX. 1 89

Stretching myself I came on down the
hill toward the white sphinx. I had
my crowbar in one hand, and the
other played with the matches in my
pocket.

" And now came a most unex-
pected thing. As I approached the
pedestal of the sphinx I found the
bronze panels were open. They had
slid down into grooves.

" At that I stopped short before
them, hesitating to enter.

** Within was a small apartment,
and on a raised place in the corner
of this was the Time Machine. I
had the small levers in my pocket.
So here, after all my elaborate prep-
arations for the siege of the white
sphinx, was a meek surrender. I
threw my iron bar away, almost sorry
not to use it.

"A sudden thought came into my
head as I stooped toward the portal.
For once at least I grasped the men-
tal operations of the Morlocks. Sup-
pressing a strong inclination to laugh,

t<y> THE TIME MACHINE.

I stepped through the bronze frame
and up to the Time Machine. I was
surprised to find it had been care-
fully oiled and cleaned. I have sus-
pected since that the Morlocks had
even partially taken it to pieces while
trying in their dim way to grasp its
purpose.

** Now, as I stood and examined
it, finding a pleasure in the mere
touch of the contrivance, the thing
I had expected happened. The
bronze panels suddenly slid up and
struck the frame with a clang. I
was in the dark — trapped. So the
Morlocks thought. At that I
chuckled gleefully.

'' I could already hear their mur-
muring laughter as they came to-
ward me. Very calmly I tried to
strike the match. I had only to fix
on the levers and depart then like a
ghost. But I had overlooked one
little thing. The matches were of
that abominable kind that light only
on the box.

THE TRAP OF THE WHITE SPHINX. 19!

"You may imagine how all my
calm vanished. The little brutes
were close upon me. One touched
me. I made a sweeping blow in the
dark at them with the lever, and be-
gan to scramble into the saddle of
the Machine. Then came one hand
upon me and then another.

'* Then I had simply to fight against
their persistent fingers for my levers,
and at the same time feel for the
studs over which these fitted. One,
indeed, they almost got away from
me. As it slipped from my hand
I had to butt in the dark with my
l^ead— I could hear the Morlock's
skull ring — to recover it. It was a
nearer thing than the fight in the
forest, I think, this last scramble.

" But at last the lever was fixed
and . pulled over. The clinging
hands slipped from me. The dark-
ness presently fell from my eyes.
I found myself in the same gray
light and tumult I have already
described.

CHAPTER XIII.

XLbc jFurtbec Disiom

HAVE already told you of
the sickness and confusion
that comes with time travel-
ing. And this time I was not seated
properly in the saddle, but sideways
and in an unstable fashion. For an
indefinite time I clung to the machine
as it swayed and vibrated, quite
unheeding how I went, and when I
brought myself to look at the dials
again I was amazed to find where I
had arrived. One dial records days,
another thousands of days, another
millions of days, and another thou-
sands of millions. Now instead of
reversing the levers I had pulled
them over so as to go forward with
them, and when I came to look at
these indicators I found that the
192

THE FURTHER VISION. 193

thousands hand was sweeping round
as fast as the seconds hand of a
watch, into futurity.

"Very cautiously, for I remem-
bered my former headlong fall, I be-
gan to reverse my motion. Slower
and slower went the circling hands,
until the thousands one seemed mo-
tionless and the daily one was no
longer a mere mist upon its scale.
Still slower, until the gray haze
around me became distincter, and dim
outlines of a low hill and a sea be-
came visible.

"But as my motion became slower
there was, I found, no blinking
change of day and night. A steady
twilight brooded over the earth.
And the band of light that had indi-
cated the sun had, I now noticed,
become fainter, had faded indeed to
invisibility in the east, and in the
west was increasingly broader and
redder. The circling of the stars
growing slower and slower had given
place to creeping points of light. At

194 THE TIME MACHINE.

last, some time before I stopped, the
sun, red and very large, halted
motionless upon the horizon, a vast
dome glowing with a dull heat. The
work of the tidal drag was accom-
plished. . The earth had come to rest
with one face to the sun even as in
our own time the moon faces the
earth.

* ' I stopped very gently and sat upon
the Time Machine looking round me.

"The sky was no longer blue.
Northeastward it was inky black, and
out of the blackness shone brightly
and steadily the pale white stars.
Overhead it was a deep Indian red,
and starless, and southeastward it
grew brighter to where, cut by the
horizon, lay the motionless hull of
the huge red sun.

"The rocks about me were of a
harsh reddish color, and all the trace
of life that I could see at first was
the intensely green vegetation that
covered every projecting point on its
southeastern side. It was the same

THE FURTHER VISION. 195

i-ich green that one sees on forest
moss or on the lichen in caves, plants
which, like these, grow in a perpetual
twilight.

"The Machine was standing on a
sloping beach. The sea stretched
away to the southwest to rise into
a sharp bright horizon against the
wan sky. There were no breakers
and no waves, for not a breath of
wind was stirring. Only a slight oily
swell rose and fell like a gentle
breathing, and showed that the
eternal sea was still moving and liv-
ing. And along the margin where
the water sometimes broke was a
thick incrustation of salt — pink under
the lurid sky.

"There was a sense of oppression
in my head and I noticed that I was
breathing very fast. The sensations
remind me of my only experience
of mountaineering, and from that I
judged the air was more rarified than
it is now.

"Far away up the desolate slope I

196 THE TIME MACHINE.

heard a harsh scream, and saw a
thing like a huge white butterfly go
slanting and fluttering up into the
sky and, circling, disappear over some
low hillocks beyond.

"The sound of its voice was so
dismal that I shivered, and seated
myself more firmly upon the Ma-
chine.

"Looking round me I saw that,
quite near to me, what I had taken to
be a reddish mass of rock was mov-
ing slowly toward me. Then I saw
the thing was really a monstrous
crab-like creature. Can you imagine
a crab as large as yonder table, with
its numerous legs moving slowly and
uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its
long antennae like carters' whips,
waving and feeling, and its stalked
eyes gleaming at you on either side
of its metallic front? Its back was
corrugated and ornamented with un-
gainly bosses, and a greenish incrus-
tation blotched it here and there. I
could see the numerous palps of its

THE FURTHER VISION. 197

complicated mouth flickering and
feeling as it approached.

"As I stared at this sinister appari-
tion crawling toward me, I felt a
tickling on my cheeks as though a fly
had alighted there.

"I tried to brush it away with my
hand, but in a moment it returned,
and almost immediately after another
came near my ear. I struck at this
and caught something threadlike. It
was drawn swiftly out of my hand.
With a frightful qualm I turned and
saw I had grasped the antennae of
another monster crab that stood im-
mediately behind me. Its evil eyes
were wriggling on their stalks, its
mouth was all alive with appetite,
and its vast ungainly claws, smeared
with green slime, were descending
upon me.

"In a moment my hand was on the
lever of the Time Machine, and I
had place a month between myself
and these monsters. But I found I
was still on the same beach and I saw

igS THE TIME MACHINE.

them distinctly now as soon as I
stopped. Dozens of them seemed to
be crawling here and there in the
somber light among the foliated
sheets of intense green.

"I cannot convey the sense of
abominable desolation that hung over
the world. The red eastern sky, the
northward blackness, the salt Dead
Sea, the stony beach crawling with
these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the
uniform, poisonous-looking green of
the lichenous plants, the thin air that
hurt one's lungs; all contributed to
an appalling effect.

"I moved on a hundred years, and
there was the same red sun, the same
dying sea, the same chill air, and
the same crowd of earthly Crustacea
creeping in and out among the green
weed and the red rocks.

"So I traveled, stopping ever and
again, in great strides of a thousand
years or more, drawn on by the mys-
tery of the earth's fate, tracing with
a strange fascination how the sun was

THE FURTHER VISION. 1 99

growing larger and duller in the west-
ward sky, and the life of the old
earth ebbing out. At last, more than
thirty million years hence, the huge
red-hot dome of the sun had come to
obscure nearly a sixth part of the
darkling heavens. Then it was I
stopped, for the crawling multitude
of crabs had disappeared, and the red
beach, save for its livid green liver-
worts and lichens, seemed lifeless
again.

"As soon as I stopped a bitter cold
assailed me. The air felt keenly
cold, and rare white flakes ever and
again came eddying down. To the
northeastward the glare of snow lay
under the starlight of the sable sky,
and I could see an undulating crest
of pinkish white hillocks. There
were fringes of ice along the sea mar-
gin, drifting masses further out, but
the main expanse of that salt ocean,
all bloody under the eternal sunset,
was still unfrozen.

"I looked about me to see if any

20O THE TIME MACHINE.

traces of animals remained. A cer-
tain indefinable apprehension still
kept me in the saddle of the Machine.
I saw nothing moving, on earth or
sky or sea. The green slime on the
rocks alone testified that life was not
extinct. A shallow sandbank had
appeared in the sea and the water
had receded from the beach. I
fancied I saw some black object flop-
ping about upon this bank, but it
became motionless as I looked at it,
and I judged my eye had been de-
ceived and that the object was merely
a rock. The stars in the sky were
intensely bright and seemed to me to
twinkle very little.

"Suddenly I noticed that the circu-
lar outline, westward, of the sun had
changed, that a concavity, a bay, had
appeared in the curve. I saw this
grow larger. For a minute, perhaps,
I stared aghast at this blackness that
was creeping over the day, and then I
realized that an eclipse was begin-
ning. No doubt, now that the moon

THE FURTHER VISION. 20I

was creeping ever nearer to the earth,
and the earth to the sun, eclipses
were of frequent occurrence.

"The darkness grew apace, a cold
wind began to blow in freshening
gusts from the east, and then the
white flakes that were falling out of
the air increased. The tide was
creeping in with a ripple and a
whisper. Beyond these lifeless
sounds the world was silent — silent!
It would be hard to convey to you
the stillness of it. All the sounds of
man, the bleating of sheep, the cries
of birds, the hum of insects, the stir
that makes the background of our
lives, were over. As the darkness
thickened the eddying flakes became
more abundant, dancing before my
eyes; and the cold of the air more
intense. At last, swiftly, one after
the other, the white peaks of the dis-
tant hills vanished into blackness.
The breeze grew to a moaning wind.
I sa.w the black central shadow of
the eclipse sweeping toward me. In

202 THE TIME MACHINE.

another moment the pale stars alone
were visible. All else was rayless ob-
scurity. The sky was absolutely black.

"A horror of this great darkness
came upon me. The cold that smote
to my marrow, and the pain I felt in
breathing, overcame me. I shivered
and a deadly nausea seized me.
Then like a red-hot bow in the sky
appeared the edge of the sun.

"I got off the Machine to recover
myself. I felt giddy and incapable
of facing the return journey. As I
stood sick and confused I saw again
the moving thing upon the shoal —
there was no mistake now that it was
a moving thing — against the red
water of the sea. It was a round
thing, of the size of a football per-
haps, or bigger; it seemed black
against the weltering blood-red water,
and it was hopping fitfully about.
Then I felt I was fainting. A ter-
rible dread of lying helpless in that
remote twilight sustained me while I
clambered upon the saddle.

THE FURTHER VISION. 203

*'SoI camehome. For a long time
I must have been insensible upon
the Machine. The blinking succes-
sion of the days and nights was
resumed, the sun grew golden again,
the sky blue. I breathed with
greater freedom. The fluctuating
contours of the land ebbed and
flowed. The hands spun backward
upon the dials. At last I saw again
the dim shadows of homes, the evi-
dences of decadent humanity.
These, too, changed and passed, and
others came. Presently when the
millions dial was at zero I slackened
speed, and began to recognize our
own pretty and familiar architec-
ture. The thousands hand ran back
to the starting point, the night and
day flapped slower and slower.
Then the old walls of the labora-
tory came round me. Very gently
now I diminished the pace of the
mechanism.

"I saw one little thing that seemed
odd to me. I think I have told you

204 THE TIME MACHINE.

that when I set out, before my veloc-
ity became very high, Mrs. Watchett
had walked across the room, travel-
ing, as it seemed to me, like a rocket.
As I returned I passed again across
that minute when she traversed the
laboratory. But now every motion
appeared to be the exact inversion of
her previous one. The door at the
lower end opened and she glided
quietly up the laboratory, back fore-
most, and disappeared behind the
door by which she had previously
entered.

"Then I stopped the Machine, and
saw about me again the old familiar
laboratory, my tools, my appliances,
just as I had left them. I got off
the thing very shakily and sat down
upon my bench. For several minutes
I trembled violently. Then I be-
came calmer. Around me was my
old workshop again, exactly as it had
been. I might have slept there and
the whole thing have been a dream.

"And yet not exactly. The thing

THE FURTHER VISION. 205

had started from the southeast corner
of the laboratory. It had come to
rest again in the northwest, against
the wall, where you will find it. That
gives you the exact distance from
my little lawn to the pedestal of the
white sphinx.

"For a time my brain became stag-
nant. Presently I got up and came
through the passage here, limping,
because my heel was still painful, and
feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the
Fall Mall Gazette on the table by
the door. I found the date was in-
deed to-day, and looking at the time-
piece, saw the hour was almost eight
o'clock. I heard your voices and
the clatter of plates. I hesitated —
I felt so sick and weak. Then I
sniffed good wholesome meat, and
opened the door. You know the
rest. I washed and dined, and now
I am telling you the story.

"I know," he said after a while,
"that all this will be absolutely in-

206 THE TIME MACHINE.

credible to you, but to me the one
incredible thing is that I am here to-
night in this old familiar room, look-
ing into your wholesome faces, and
telling you all these strange adven-
tures."

He looked at the Medical Man.

"No; I cannot expect you to
believe it. Take it as a lie, or a
prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the
workshop. Consider I have been
speculating upon the destinies of our
race, until I have hatched this fiction.
Treat my assertion of its truth as a
mere stroke of art to enhance its in-
terest. And taking it as a story,
what do you think of it?"

He took up his pipe and began in
his old accustomed manner to tap
upon the bars of the grate.

CHAPTER XIV.
Btter the Zimc traveler's Stor^.

HERE was a momentary
stillness. Then chairs be-
gan to creak and shoes to
scrape upon the carpet. I took my
eyes off the Time Traveler's face
and looked round at his audience.
They were in the dark and little spots
of color swam before them. The
Medical Man seemed absorbed in
the contemplation of our host. The
Editor was looking hard at the end
of his cigar — the sixth. The Jour-
nalist fumbled for his watch. The
others as far as I remember were
motionless.

The Editor stood up with a sigh.
"What a pity it is you're not a
writer of stories!" he said, putting
207

208 THE TIME MACHINE.

his hand on the Time Traveler's
shoulder.

"You don't believe it?"

"Well "

"I thought not." The Time Trav-
eler turned round to us. "Where
are the matches?" he said. He lit
one and spoke over his pipe, puffing,
"To tell you all the truth— I hardly
believe it myself — and yet "

His eyes fell with a mute inquiry
upon the withered white flowers upon
the little table. Then he turned over
the hand holding his pipe, and I saw
he was looking at some half healed
scars on his knuckles.

The Medical Man rose, came
to the lamp, and examined the
flowers. "The gynoecium's odd,"
he said.

The Psychologist leaned forward
to see, holding out his hand for a
specimen.

"I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter
to one," said the Journalist. "How
shall we get home?"

AFTER THE STORY. 20^

"Plenty of cabs at the station,"
said the Psychologist.

"It's a curious thing," said the
Medical Man; "but I certainly don't
know the natural order of these
flowers. May I have them?"

The Time Traveler hesitated.
Then suddenly, "Certainly not."

"Where did you really get them?"
said the Medical Man.

The Time Traveler put his hand
to his head. He spoke like one who
was trying to keep hold of an idea
that eluded him. "They were put
into my pocket by Weena— when I
traveled into Time." He stared

round the room. "I'm d d if it

isn't all going. This room and you
and the atmosphere of everyday is
too much for my memory. Did I
ever make a Time Machine, or a
model of a Time Machine, or is it
all only a dream? They say life is
a dream, a precious poor dream at
times — but I can't stand another
that won't fit. It's madness. And

2IO THE TIME MACHINE.

where did the dream come from? I
must look at that Machine. If there
is one."

He caught up the lamp swiftly and
carried it flaring redly through the
door into the corridor.

We followed him.

There in the flickering light of the
lamp was the Machine, sure enough,
squat, ugly, and askew, a thing of
brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent,
glimmering quartz. Solid to the
touch — for I put out my hand and
felt the rail of it — and with brown
spots and smears upon the ivory,
and bits of grass and moss upon
the lower parts, and one rail bent
awry.

The Time Traveler put the lamp
down on the bench, and ran his hand
along the broken rail.

"It's all right now," he said.
"The story I told you was true.
I'm sorry to have brought you out
here — in the cold."

He took up the lamp, and in an

A FTER THE S TOR Y. 211

absolute silence we returned to the
smoking room.

The Time Traveler came into the
hall with us and helped the Editor
on with his coat. The Medical Man
looked into our host's face and, with
a certain hesitation, told him he was
suffering from overwork, at which
he laughed hugely. I remember
him standing in the open doorway
bawling good-night.

I shared a cab with the Editor.
He thought the tale a "gaudy lie."
For my own part I was unable to
come to any conclusion about the
matter. The story was so fantastic
and incredible, the telling so credible
and sober. I lay awake most of the
night thinking about it. I deter-
mined to go next day and see the
Time Traveler again.

I was told he was in the laboratory,
and being on easy terms in the house
I went up to him. The laboratory,
however, was empty. I stared for
a minute at the Time Machine and

212 THE TIME MACHINE.

put out my hand and touched a
lever. At that the squat, substantial-
looking mass swayed like a bough
shaken by the wind. Its instability
startled me extremely, and I had a
queer reminiscence of childish days
when I used to be forbidden to
meddle. I came back through the
corridor. The Time Traveler met
me in the smoking room. He w^as
coming from the house. He had a
small camera under one arm and a
knapsack under the other. He
laughed when he saw me and gave
me an elbow to shake.

"I'm frightfully busy," he said;
"with that thing in there."

"But is it not some hoax?" said
I. "Do you really travel through
Time?"

"Really and truly I do." And he
looked frankly into my eyes.

He hesitated. His eye wandered
round the room. "I only want half
an hour," he said. "I know why
you came, and it's awfully good of

AFTER THE STORY. 213

you. There's some magazines here.
If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove this
time traveling to you up to the hilt.
Specimens and all. If you'll forgive
my leaving you now?"

I consented, hardly comprehend-
ing then the full import of his
words, and he nodded and went on
down the corridor, I heard the
door of the laboratory slam, seated
myself in a chair, and took up the
New Review. What was he going to
do before lunch time? Then sud-
denly I was reminded by an adver-
tisement that I had promised to meet
Richardson the publisher at two.
I looked at my watch, and saw I
could barely save that engagement.
I got up and went down the passage
to tell the Time Traveler.

As I took hold of the handle of
the door I heard an exclamation
oddly truncated at the end, and a
click and a thud. A gust of air
whirled round me as I opened the
door, and from within came the

214 THE TIME MACHINE.

sound of broken glass falling on the
floor. The Time Traveler was not
there. I seemed to see a ghostly
indistinct figure sitting in a whirling
mass of black and brass for a
moment, a figure so transparent that
the bench behind with its sheets of
drawings was absolutely distinct;
but this phantasm I immediately
perceived was illusory. The Time
Machine had gone. Save for a sub-
siding stir of dust the central space
of the laboratory was empty. A
pane of the skylight had apparently
just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement.
I knew that something strange had
happened, and for a moment could
not distinguish what the strange thing
might be. As I stood staring, the
door into the garden opened, and
the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then
ideas began to come.

"Has Mr. gone out that

way?" said I.

AFTER THE STORY. 21$

"No, sir. No one has come out
this way. I was expecting to find
him here."

At that I understood. At the
risk of disappointing Richardson I
remained waiting for the Time
Traveler, waiting for the second,
perhaps still stranger, story, and the
specimens and photographs he would
bring with him.

But I am beginning to fear now
that I must wait a lifetime for that.
The Time Traveler vanished three
years ago. Up to the present he has
not returned, and when he does
return he will find his home in the
hands of strangers and his little
gathering of auditors broken up for-
ever. Filby has exchanged poetry
for playwriting, and is a rich man — as
literary men go — and extremely un-
popular. The Medical Man is dead,
the Journalist is in India, and the
Psychologist has succumbed to par-
alysis. Some of the other men I
used to meet there have dropped as

2l6 THE TIME MACHINE.

completely out of existence as if they,
too, had traveled off upon some simi-
lar anachronisms. And so, ending
in a kind of dead wall, the story of
the Time Machine must remain for
the present at least.

THE END.

e

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